Skype closes its developers ecosystem
September 12, 2009 | Author: Adam Levine
It seems that the new Skype owners prefer a shock therapy. Today they decided to close Skype Extras - add-on applications created by third-party developers. Today there are few hundreds of these add-ons in the catalog, and among them Pamela (for call recording), Skylook (plug-in for Outlook), Yugma (web-conferencing) and others. For some developers it was a primary business model. The official reason is that not enough customers where using and paying for these extras, so it's not profitable for company to support this ecosystem.
Starting today no more applications will be certified and added to Skype Extras. The existing apps will be available until their certification expires. And on Dec 11 Skype users will not be able to pay for extras and the developers will stop receiving money. At the same time Skype API won't be closed.
So, that's how Skype gets rid of not profitable assets. But how much do they value the trust of developers, that will never come back?
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