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What Is All the Hype about Skype?

So what is all this hype about Skype, anyway? Skype is the fastest-growing communication application on the Internet. According to the article Intel Working with Skype that appeared on Australian IT on August 30, 2005, Skype has roughly 54 million users and as of that month accounts for 46 percent of all North American voice traffic carried over the Internet. Many refer to Skype as an instant-messaging (IM) application. Think of Skype as more of a voice call application that also provides IM features. IM allows you to type quick messages to your list of contacts and send them instantly. What Skype adds to IM is the ability to talk, in real time, with your contacts in addition to typical IM functions. More important, the quality of the audio, features, and options available for Skype users gives Skype the advantage over the rest of the IM products. Skype has made Internet telephony, or Voice over IP (VoIP) in other words, voice calls over the Internet available to everyone, geeks and nongeeks alike. For geeks, and you know who you are, Skype is just plain cool.

Skype has grown at an incredible rate. According to Skype.com, in the approximately two years it has been available, it has been downloaded over 155 million times and has...