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 eBay bought it and then sold a majority stake to an investment group. Two years later, Microsoft 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
By that time, I’d been using Skype for years and worried that Microsoft might ruin the service (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 https://t.co/SsyjyZl2xD pic.twitter.com/3EtlcItcM3October 29, 2020
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 I learned to half-dress for television: 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 Google Meet, Cisco Webex, and even Microsoft Teams video conferences.
Building on Skype
Microsoft’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, Microsoft’s first digital assistant, and was the first place where I saw real-time translation at work.
That’s right. Skype was translating the spoken word in real time long before Google and Samsung brought the feature to phones.
We’re getting a preview of “the next generation of Skype.” Note the Cortana integration. #Build2016 pic.twitter.com/HpNfKVmvObMarch 30, 2016
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 Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft’s newer and more preferred platform, Teams, which is better integrated with the Microsoft 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, Microsoft included this in a blog post, “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 Metropolis and the 1960s cartoon of the future The Jetsons.
I’ll miss Skype, its dial-in sound, and even the name. Maybe Microsoft will find another use for it, though I struggle to imagine what that might be.
