Ask HN: What Happened to Skype? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What Happened to Skype?

1 pointsequoia5 comments

Years ago "Skype" was a verb ("skype me", "let's skype") like "Zoom" is now. How did Skype go from being "The Name" in online calling to whatever it is today? I don't quite understand what caused Skype to fall and Zoom to rise.

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There has to be a business school case study for this.

For the last 30 years there have been a parade of "chat" programs such as CuSeeMe, ICQ, AIM, Paltalk, Skype, Google Talk, Google Hangouts (and I think four other chat programs) and Facebook Messenger, MSN Messenger, Lync (I think I spelled that right), HipChat, Slack, even "Skype For Business" and "Microsoft Teams."

In the open world the story is more dreadful, as IRC is a backwater and the open XMPP protocol is more popular with cops, soldiers and spies (just pipe your XMPP messages into Lotus Notes...) than anyone else.

The one constant is that you can't plot a steady curve of products getting better in time (like the underlying computers, network, etc.) Instead it seems like something starts out cool (like Skype at the beginning) and then deteriorates, then it's like "Cool, Zoom! It works as well as Skype used to work"...)

I think the market for these programs is not a healthy competition but rather these are a backwater in the big battles over platforms. (e.g. Facebook Messenger is like AIM except FM is tied to FB and AIM was tied to AOL.)

If the euros wanted to contribute something positive to the world they would kick out proprietary chat programs and get people to use a profile of XMPP.

I think what you’re getting at is technological stagnation (at least in terms of the utility users draw from protocols) but a succession of rolling waves of network-effect-driven client adoption. And that’s the key point: if the user experience is essentially indifferent to underlying protocols what drives these waves is the relative ease of getting in contact with the group of people with whom you wish to converse. I don’t think Skype has been supplanted, it’s just been accosted... and, ironically, who drives this is not those who has several different applications on device suitable for connecting to different people who use different networks, but rather by those who insist on having a single application and that thereby force others to make decisions that suit them because they have a single option.

Zoom is multi-person and more suited for team meetings (although, as they recently discovered, originally designed for internal corporate use, not general public).

Skype is mainly for person-to-person calls, but that tech has been commoditized and made into a one-click feature of Facetime, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, you name it. Downloading a separate app just for video connection seems excessive these days.

My personal anecdote is that I was a Skype user, had the desktop and phone app, had an account with maybe $20 in credit for the occasional call to a POTS number. Then Microsoft bought it, I had trouble logging in, used my "Live.com" account, had trouble logging in again, created a new account but no longer had my contact list, and eventually just found something else to use to call or video chat with relatives.

If MSFT had just left everything alone I'd still be using skype regularly.

Personally, I dropped Skype when they redesigned the app to imitate snapchat or some other dreadful social network that was in vogue at the time. The app used to be clean but then it was turned into an ungodly mess visuals-wise.

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