Skype, the online video-calling service, is shutting down in May after more than two decades of service. For those of a certain generation, Skype changed everything.
Before it launched in 2003, making international calls 📱 was prohibitively expensive and few viable digital alternatives existed. Skype offered users a cheap and easy way to call anyone in the world, skirting the draconian landline industry. When Skype added video calls a few years later, it felt as if the future had arrived: Students used Skype to stay connected to families back home 🤙, international friendships were born 🤝, and a generation of cross-border relationships began ❤️ — or ended 💔 — over the service. By the late 2000s, Skype was so ubiquitous that its name became a verb, much like Xerox and Google. Its bouncy ringtones and audio notifications were iconic. 🎶
At its peak, Skype had about 300 million users around the world. But it was a product of the desktop era, and as users went mobile, Skype lost its edge to upstarts like WhatsApp and FaceTime. Today, the app is forgotten on most phones and computers, particularly in the West. ⏰
The platform still has dedicated pockets of users in countries like Turkey, Russia, India, and the Philippines, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. “Skype has been an integral part of shaping modern communications and supporting countless meaningful moments,” Microsoft said in a blog post announcing its imminent shutdown. 😴
Before Skype goes the way of other early internet icons like AOL Instant Messenger and Friendster, Rest of World readers shared their favorite memories of the service. Here are their stories. 🙇
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RIP to one more thing a big corporation bought and successfully murdered. Skype before Microsoft was literally amazing.
Sad that it is being replaced by the much worse Teams and there isn’t much to replace it in the open source world except for Signal, Threema, Wire and maybe Jitsi meet.
Whither Jami ?
None of those can call phone numbers. They’re not replacements for Skype.
I can’t believe that Microsoft had almost a monopoly between msn messenger and Skype. Then they slept and let WhatsApp/Facebook take everything (iMessage is not a thing in my country)
Skype is still a very good voice chat app, despite a succession of cluttered and pointless updates. It’s clear and clean in sound, and has an excellent gain tuner.
I will use it until the day it dies, and then switch to WhatsApp or something else. It’s all shit by comparison, so I’m not too chuffed as to where I go. Yeah, it’s all junk.
But with my contacts on Whatsapp, signal, teams, slack, and zoom, this feels so much like the pre-jabber days where pidgin was the only sane app. Now we don’t even have that.
This is lame.
You can’t call regular phone lines with WhatsApp, teams, slack, or zoom. None of those are replacements for sjyoe.
Teams, as a business product, does actually offer phone service. It is a special license though and from what I hear people managing it hate it, even though users tend to like it.
Does it require a monthly fee? Does it cost the same as Skype? Skype was like less than ten cents per minute, pay as you go.
Oh yes, and it is really only a business feature. It isn’t competing with Skype. It is actually hard for me to think of Teams as something non-business users are supposed to use.
I used Skype a lot to call landlines from outside the US, but now I need a replacement, do any of you have recommendations? I’m testing Rebtel, but it isn’t cutting it for me, it connects like 1 out of 5 times.
I migrated a friend group of skype to matrix/Element. Everything works just as fine.
Even calling?
I am positively surprised, yes. Recently had an 3h call and my friend was in the us and iam in europe. It was flawless.
What servers were you on and what clients were you using?
Bring back icq.
Uh-oh!
XMPP is still here…
Icq was back, last i checked. You may even find your contacts there still, if not messages.
It shut down last year, but it was also run by Mail.ru. Probably not something you want anywhere near your devices
Interesting, sadly I no longer remember my old number, nor do I have access to the email I used 25+ years ago.
Am I the only one who is physically repulsed by this use of emojis?
Welcome to the modern internet ¯_(ツ)_/¯
You dropped this \
And like, I understand the use of emojis in general, I’m no boomer, just using them in this way is so weird. Like this usage of emojis feels boomery.
Its like the difference between
My iphone died mid conversation 🫠
And
My iphone 🍎📱 died mid conversation
The latter fills me with rage, the former feels reasonable
IdroppedthisbecauseIforgothowMarkdownworksagain 😡
Anyway, I still didn’t get used to emojis having different meanings.
Damn. I have like a hundred bucks of Skype credit on my account. What happens to that money?
It was unreliable on my potato computer and with the speeds of back then for me, but I remember that pretty much all of my friends used it. I had to use my mum’s computer to join in lol.
I’m always reminded of https://youtu.be/ZI0w_pwZY3E for Skype
Isnt it still the best platform for RT audio calls on shitty Internet?
And how am I supposed to call non-US numbers from my computer now?!?
