In the world of the Internet, it’s important that you rapidly grow your product, achieve “network effect” barriers to entry, and saturate the market. Then move into adjacent verticals.

Skype just announced the launch of the Skype Game Channel. I’ve always been a huge fan of Skype and believe that the price Ebay paid for it was justified. Period.

It was clear at the time that Skype was the market leader and would remain the market leader. It has. (Nearly 200mm users)

It was clear that Skype was able to monetize its users. It has. ($320mm in annualized revenues and growing)

It wasn’t so clear that Skype would be able to open its platform for ancillary services. It has. (Skype Extras has 18mm downloads, and see my post on Wal-Mart offering Skype Certified Hardware)

It wasn’t clear that Skype would be able to move into additional verticals. With the launch of the Skype Game Channel, it’s pretty clear that… It has.

Now, Skype is moving into a new market and a pretty large one at that: Two-way and multi-player games. Sure, there are other services that let you do something similar, but none of them have 200mm registered users. Nor do any of them have the massive third party developer contingent looking to ride the Skype wave.

I’d be interested to see where Skype goes with this. Look at Zedge and its ability to launch 500 mobile games. They’ve been pretty successful and those are only one-way games, lacking any two-way or multi-player communication. Of course, the cell phone is the next frontier when it comes to mobile community oriented games.

I look forward to that Really.