What is the current status of the Skype Extras? Can I reach you by phone or e-mail?

Thanks,
Rosalind Rock

OnState (also a horn toot – http://www.on-state.com) is in a very similar place to Fonolo. We make virtual call center and virtual PBX software that is platform independent, but Skype was one of our original platforms of choice, and remains a reliable underlying source of communications for us and many of our clients. So while the impact of this move will not negatively affect us, it remains a bit of a head-scratcher nonetheless. I’m hopeful that this is a move by Skype to rid themselves of non-productive “partners” (not all the dissimilar from what they did to the partners section of their website back at the end of April) and come out with an enhanced version later. Some insight on this would be helpful, though.

Why Skype maybe right about killing its Extras developer program and being careful with APIs
http://www.goebel.net/technews/2009/09/why-skype-maybe-right-about-killing-its.html

-Christoph
Pamela Team

With a lot of invested Skype developers now left out in the cold, I wanted to highlight what we’re doing at Ribbit – we’re encouraging developers to extend our entire telephony platform to their own users. No matter what a developer builds, they are always inheriting the value of our communications platform, but are never in a position of competing with us.

So with this, we say come one, come all to the thwarted Skype developers. http://developer.ribbit.com/blog/ribbit-open-telephony-api-for-skype-developers/

Golden opportunity missed, as I noted in my original post on the potential for Skype when the original eBay acquisition was announced:

Another Spin on eBay-Skype – http://bit.ly/3DiqZv

Check it out if interested.

Mark

Yes, traditionally you get more leverage from being a platform but if the developers add little value it might be more trouble than it is worth. Maybe killing support for extras will open more opportunities down the road.

Skype built its franchise on the P2P architecture which let them offer free calls between computers, and super-cheap calls between a computer and a landline. But their recent business initiatives show them moving toward selling VOIP minutes in bulk to PBX providers like Asterisk and Shoretel, even though this doesn’t take advantage of the P2P architecture and the Skype client.

Dropping developer outreach to the client suggests (maybe?) further deemphasis of the P2P model. Are we seeing them prepare to abandon their not-so-secret advantage?

Developers will help you create an amazing ecosystem if you make the effort. It means everything from being responsive to providing extra access to those doing cool stuff, to finding a way to reward them either via visibility (fame) or letting them make money (fortune). The early things eBay did well included having people who identified the top applications that brought value beyond just the eBay community and they helped them with introductions to VCs and potential partners and they gave them access to unique data sets that others didn’t get. The list goes on….

Your API program takes a lot of planning and management ongoing. Some key things to think about..
- Why are you doing this? (traffic, direct revenue, brand awareness)
- Who is your audience/api consumer? (suppliers, independent developers, affiliates)
- Is your goal to be a platform (ebay), content provider(NYT), affiliate program(AWS) or functionality/service(Calais)

Developer ecosystems are tough to build, but once you do, the value is worth the challenge. Ask eBay, Amazon, and more recently someone like Thomson Reuters Calais team.