Skype's new CEO: Low-key and cautious

Silverman is advocating an incremental approach, so it does not surprise me to hear pundits saying that Skype is doomed because it did not bring in a heavyweight CEO from outside with promises to shake things up. They are wrong.

Silverman seems to have a solid background and experience. I suspect that if there is anything that can be done to grow Skype faster, he'll implement it. That being said, perhaps there's not much that the new CEO can do to affect the success of Skype one way or the other. Skype is already growing 2x-4x faster than other VOIP carriers, and the big roadblocks (Broadband, Wireless, and Legislation) are largely beyond the control of its managers. I predict therefore that the Silverman administration will be low-key, cautious, and incremental in its approach. In his own words, Silverman seems to say the same thing.

It is reasonable to expect Silverman to bring steady but perhaps minor improvements to the API, to support and service, and to the feature set (including mashups with eBay, PayPal and a few outsiders). At the top of my personal wish list... SkypeIN and Skypecast absolutely MUST come out of beta.