10 million Skype plug-ins downloaded

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 02 May 2007 13:53

Your IT - Home IT

Skype says more than 10 million third-party Skype Extras have been downloaded since the arrival of Skype for Windows 3 last December. But since there are over 170 million registered Skype users, that figure isn't as impressive as it seems at first glance.

With 3.5 million downloads, the most popular Extra is Reallusion's CrazyTalk (freeware), which provides lip-synchronised avatars for video calls. Apart from hiding the caller's true appearance, CrazyTalk allows people without cameras to participate in video calls.

The most popular Extra for business use is the Pamela Call Recorder (available in four editions ranging from freeware to $US34.95) with one million downloads. Features include voice and video call recording, and answering machine functionality. The feature set varies between versions.

Also on the serious side, Skylook ($US99.95) provides Skype/Outlook integration including SMS alerts of missed reminders, text-to-speech conversion of emails, and access to Skype voicemail via Outlook's inbox.

"We're pleased that so many people love using Skype and are downloading Extras at this incredible pace to connect with people they care about around the world," said Paul Amery, director of the Skype developer program.

"The Skype developer community continues to amaze us by creating new software and tools that plug in directly to Skype and enable the Skype community to do cool things on Skype."

Skype claims to have 4000 registered developers, but it is not clear how many of them are active.