Skype seeks UK marketing boss

Marketing 06-May-04

Skype, an online phone call company taking on BT's landline business, is hunting a head of marketing to drive UK growth.

Skype, which promotes itself as a global person-to-person telephone company, uses a piece of free software enabling users to make calls to each other anywhere in the world using a computer headset. Because the call is made over the internet, users can avoid the international rates charged by landline operators.

The company has employed headhunters to find a marketer to develop its strategy. To date, Skype has relied on word of mouth to increase customer acquisition. The company is developing technology to introduce the service on mobiles and handheld devices.

The concept was launched by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, creators of peer-to-peer file-sharing service KaZaA. So far, more than 11m customers have downloaded the Skype software, according to the firm.