Skype announced last week that they were discontinuing their "Extras" program, which is a storefront that allows 3rd party developers to to extend on the Skype platform (i.e. Skype’s App Store). An immediate and very negative reaction from Skypohiles around the world lead the company to clarify that this was just a transition to a new and better developer program.
Developers: "Give it to us naked"
Naturally, the debate now moves to what that new program should look like. A long standing request from developers has been the ability to use Skype’s communication services without actually running the Skype desktop client. This is the so-called "naked Skype" approach. (Alec Saunders credits a post from 2006 as the origin of the term.)
TechCrunch says of the naked option:
Eventually, we suspect, Skype will release a SDK that allows developers to integrate deep into Skype and make calls over the Skype service without opening the Skype client. In other words, people may start to think of Skype (voice, video, chat) as a service rather than a client that must be installed and used to communicate.
Telephony Online said Skype should:
move the API to more of a service-layer rather than client layer access… let a developer embed call controls for accessing Skype into their own applications, with Skype benefiting from network usage, particularly usage that uses Skype In/Out minutes.
The risk: becoming the "dumbest pipe of all".
The problem there is that Skype is not the cheapest option for PSTN access (aka "In/Out minutes"). If I were a developer, and Skype offered this kind of API, I would use Skype’s IM, file-transfer and Skype-to-Skype calling features (for which Skype earns no money) and I would use a cheaper 3rd party provider for PSTN interconnect.
Markus Goebel put it well a recent post: "If Skype opens too much, they can become the dumbest pipe of all. Other companies and services would channel their calls for free over Skype’s gratis P2P network."
(For more on "smart vs dumb pipes" see here.)
Skype is able to charge premium rates for their In/Out minutes precisely because that service is tightly bound to the client experience. The fees for those PSTN minutes (3 billion of them last quarter) account for nearly all of Skype’s revenue (which was $170m last quarter). (Data from Skype Journal.)
If they make their API too open — go too naked — they risk leaving their cash cow out to freeze.
0 Responses to “For Skype, going naked could freeze their cash cow”