Has any popular service disappeared overnight quite like Skype? It was common to set up Skype calls with friends/relatives as late as 2018-2019. Starting 2020 people would laugh at you if you even suggested it. What happened?
I remember Skype being used by everyone for everything up until 2016-2017. Even when meeting people online it wasn't uncommon to exchange Skype handles so that we could voice chat. Then it really just... disappeared.
Combination FaceTime, discord, zoom, Google meets even, probably more, all taking off. Used to not have many choices if you wanted to video/voice call people. Now it seems every social app has it baked in.
For me, it stopped doing what it always did for me, when MS bought it.
It used to be dead simple, make calls on shitty airport wifi. Chat messaging that worked reliably.
I used it for dead simple group messaging at work and personal use - desktop, laptop, phone. Send a message and it'd arrive.
Then in something like 2015 that all started to break. I'd send a message from one computer, and it'd only deliver to one of the recipient's devices. Then the replies from that device would only go to one of mine.
Neither had complete message history. Sometimes they would sync up, but then other times not.
It resulted in an argument with someone who thought I was slacking off and ignoring them. It took comparing message history in person to find out that half the messages I sent them were not on their device and vice versa. Even signing out/in again didn't show the missing messages.
Calls started doing similar things where I'd call someone, it'd time out. I'd message them asking to call me back when they were ready, only to find out that they hadn't seen the call come through at all and were waiting for me to be ready.
Eventually we gave up on it for work - moved over to Slack for messaging and something else for voice when we needed it (This was before Slack had voice functions).
The few friends I still spoke to on Skype went over to something else, too.
So, if someone suggested connecting using Skype I wouldn't laugh at them, but I also would suggest just about anything else.
> Then in something like 2015 that all started to break.
Interesting. For me it just always worked, and continues to do so, so I have zero reason to tell all my releatives to stop using it.
Some relatives are on Whatsapp so I unfortunately have to use that as well. I also use Viber as a backup comms channel with part of the family as well , as sometimes that's the only thing that works.
> Eventually we gave up on it for work
Right, I haven't used it at work for a long time. We did use it at some point, but video calls on it with multiple people were just horrible... which is why Zoom took over everyone else as it just worked and everything else, including Slack, did not work almost at all.
I was just saying that, for family calls, Skype for me has been great and I guess your impression of it is outdated. It's a pretty good tool and I would laugh at anyone that thinks otherwise just to be mean back at them :D.
It's what my mum's learned to use, so it still has a place in my life.
The credit is useful when she's not on skype and I can use a few cents (if that) to dial her landline from the other side of the world and say "Hey, turn your computer on!". It's true this is no longer that special - I get a few hours international calls for free with my mobile plan these days so I don't need-need skype for it.
I imagine the reason they want to move to a subscription model is that there are too many people like me - $10 credit lasts a few years and probably represents a liability on their books as well as a customer they aren't getting any more money from for some time.
My take is the pandemic forced a lot of people who did not use much Skype into Teams, Zooms, etc. Then WhatsApp joined in too.
A much bigger number of people that had never heard or used Skype by 2018 were VC jockeys in 2020. The critical mass moved on, network effect did the rest.
It was definitely this. Skype was already on the decline, and then COVID hit and everyone had to work from home. Meetings apps took over (Zoom, Webex, eventually Teams (Microsoft antitrust violation)), and in that business battle most had free tiers. It was easy for people to use their work account or the free version of something they already knew how to use. There was no reason to sign up for Skype for anyone not already on it. Then the social network effects took care of the rest.
They integrated with Live accounts. It was around 2017 I think, so with a slight delay and migration period we're looking at the same timeline.
Moving from "legacy" account to microsoft accounts was a huge PITA, a lot of related other changes also degraded the experience (they basically migrated the whole platform). It became overnight a true enterprise software that would only be used if someone told you to do so.
I still use it as a backup because apps like whatsapp or line are also a PITA to use on desktop, but I get why people flew from it.
Coming to Skype, no matter what happened to them, they always did and still have the highest quality and lowest latency for calling phones and landlines all over the world. I've tried many, many services, including Google Voice, and nothing even came close. Skype was so easy to set up and use, but after Microsoft bought them, they brought in some complications and a little bit of confusing UX. But overall, I am sad to see the decline of this great product.
During the pandemic I took my old Xbox over to my parents with the Kinect and used Skype on Xbox so they could see their grandkids on their TV and it was like room to room chatting.
I used it extensively until Microsoft did that absolutely atrocious “redesign” that tried turning it from a messenger into a flashy social app, making it an unusable ugly mess. Telegram was just starting to grow but I had to switch.
