Internet telephone giant Skype now lets Web sites and other Internet applications tap into the untold millions of people using Skype's instant-messaging (IM) feature.
The Luxemburg-based company on Wednesday unleashed its SkypeWeb and SkypeNet developer tools. By doing so, Skype says it is opening up its platform to anyone who wants to integrate Skype Instant Messaging into other applications.
Skype believes it can be a significant threat to instant messaging giants Yahoo, MSN and America Online. With 51 million registered usernames, Skype IM is potentially twice the size of Yahoo's instant messaging community, and six times that of America Online, according to figures provided by Skype.
"Skype to wants to embrace the rest of Internet," Skype co-founder Janus Friis said during a recent interview.
Microsoft, America Online and Yahoo representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Skype's Friis said he expects a large number of hardware and software makers to weave Skype's IM into their creations during the coming months. But he wouldn't identify any companies intending to do so.
He did offer hypothetical examples. Online gamers involved in massive multiple player mayhem could use Skype IM to taunt rivals and discuss strategy with teammates. Skype's IM features could be incorporated, Friss suggests, into software-based media players for personal computers, Web sites for dating, blogging or "eBay kinds of auctions", Friis said.
But there's one major drawback to Skype's new initiative. The manufacturers can't incorporate Skype's Net phone features. Since Skype's launch nearly two years ago, there have been 12 billion minutes worth of phone Skype calls, in competition with mobile and landline phone networks.
"Voice is an emerging area of technology, we're watching it keenly and will help promote maturation," said Kelly Larabee, a Skype spokeswoman. "The demand and the interoperability existed for IM, and we acted."
The Skype moves come a few days before the second anniversary of Skype's first release. Since then, the number of people downloading Skype peer-to-peer phone software has surpassed historical numbers and rates put up by Internet killers like Hotmail or Internet Explorer.
Like most other VoIP providers, Skype makes its primary product software to make free calls to others over the Internet. More than two million people pay a few pounds a month for tandem premium services that let Skype calls to also reach traditional home, office or cell phones.
Skype and host of rivals are turning the telecoms industry on its head using Internet technology to offer more calling features for less money. In this topsy-turvy world, Skype represents the competitive extreme, wielding a weapon that few others are willing or able to match; using peer-to-peer architecture, it claims it can offer its software-based telephone service for free to tens of millions of people, and still make boatloads of profits by persuading only a fraction of its users to upgrade to paid premium services.
In order to make a big impact, however, Skype needs to get its service off of the Internet and PCs and onto familiar phone equipment via the traditional phone network that most people still use.
