Third-Party Skype Tools Will Stop Working in December

Users are reporting seeing a message in Skype warning them that some tools used with the Skype application will stop working in December 2013.

Following Microsoft's acquisition of Skype, it was announced that the Desktop API (or the Skye Public API) is no longer supported and will be discontinued in December 2013.

Microsoft explains that: "These applications can be hardware products or software applications, but they're all created by developers who use the Desktop API, a text-based protocol, to interact with Skype software.

The Desktop API is designed primarily to help developers manage calls from outside the Skype application. Applications that use the Desktop API are not endorsed, tested, or supported by Skype."

This means that a selection of applications that tap into Skype will stop working soon, and the same is true of some hardware devices such as headsets.