Microsoft is hanging up on Skype, and we should salute it for introducing us all to video calls

[Pelican Press 0]

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is hanging up on Skype, and we should salute it for introducing us all to video calls

If I close my eyes, I can hear the once iconic Skype ringtone: “Da DA-da, do-do DO do.” It was the sound of communication and possibility. Who knows what would happen during that video call, what I would learn, what I would say? Now, as we prepare for Skype to wind down in May of this year, I want to reflect on what it’s meant to you and me.

Where would we be without Skype? I know most of you no longer use the OG video calling platform, but there was a time when Skype was so popular it became a verb: ‘I’ll Skype you, okay?'”

Almost 25 years ago, Skype was part of the peer-to-peer (P2P) decentralized revolution. Like the music-sharing platform Napster, Skype lets you connect directly between two systems over the internet to conduct video calls, and, like Napster, it was a bit of a sensation.

By 2005, unlikely suitor

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bought it and then sold a majority stake to an investment group. Two years later,

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paid $8.5 billion to acquire the by-then wildly popular video communication platform. I’d say it was attractive because Skype was being used by consumers and businesses, including broadcast outlets that liked to conduct Skype-based on-air interviews.

A sound like no other

Skype – Skype Ringtone [HQ SOUND] –

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By that time, I’d been

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and worried that

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(I guess, ultimately, I was right). I’d dallied with using it to call friends and family. After all, FaceTime didn’t arrive until 2009, and at the time, most people didn’t own an iPhone, but they did have Windows PCs.

Dressed 50% for Skype TV pic.

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.com/3EtlcItcM3

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Most of my Skype calls were with broadcast studios who appreciated Skype’s remarkable network management, which usually ensured clear audio and video that nearly rivaled what they could get via satellite feeds. Naturally, they also liked it because it was cheaper than those satellite hookups and then sending out an entire film crew.

Skype was where

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: If I wasn’t going to a studio and only needed to show 50% of me to the Skype camera on my PC, then it was business on top and party (or at least casual) on the bottom. I mastered this look years before I would repeat it for countless

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Meet, Cisco Webex, and even

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Teams video conferences.

Building on Skype

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’s interest and devotion to Skype waxed and waned over the years, but for a time, Skype was a hub of development. It was an early home for Cortana,

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’s first digital assistant, and was the first place where I saw

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.

That’s right. Skype was

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long before

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and Samsung brought the feature to phones.

We’re getting a preview of “the next generation of Skype.” Note the Cortana integration. #Build2016 pic.

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.com/HpNfKVmvOb

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If we hadn’t trained on Skype, would we have been truly prepared for remote work and all those video meetings? I know so many video conferencing platforms showed up in the years before the pandemic when we were all shuttered at home, but which one showed us the way? I’d argue it was Skype.

Eventually, broadcasters and most of my Skype buddies moved away from Skype. Media companies started using Zoom and the aforementioned Cisco. Businesses adopted

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Meet, Zoom, and

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’s newer and more preferred platform, Teams, which is better integrated with the

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365 suite.

Gen Z might point to Zoom as the platform that made video conferencing cool, but aside from being free, widely available, and supporting large group video conferences, it didn’t do anything that Skype hadn’t done first. But digital memory is short, and I’m sure they’ll tell their grandkids, who’ll use brain chips to send video streams to friends and social media, that when they were kids, they used to “Zoom.”

Gen Z might point to Zoom as the platform that made video conferencing cool, but aside from being free, widely available, and supporting large group video conferences, it didn’t do anything that Skype hadn’t done first.

In announcing the change,

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included this

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, “Skype has been an integral part of shaping modern communications and supporting countless meaningful moments, and we are honored to have been part of the journey. ”

It’s true: Skype, the unruly and sometimes unloved communication platform, made it possible and okay to communicate with anyone via video on a PC. It was the realization of a dream that stretched back to 1927’s

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and the 1960s cartoon of the future

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.

I’ll miss Skype, its dial-in sound, and even the name. Maybe

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will find another use for it, though I struggle to imagine what that might be.

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#hanging #Skype #salute #introducing #video #calls

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