goodbye, Skype era

From the «calling from my Pentium 4 spaceheater» department:
Title: Goodbye, Skype. I’ll never forget you
Author: Adrian Horton
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2025 07:00:26 +0000
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/27/skype-shutting-down
Podcast Download URL: https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4f0cdf52b2c95897ed401c82bd4b5fd1b031bdf8/0_140_7048_4229/master/7048.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=295302e405d6715d104d6eaad31f2abc

I spent entire nights in 2011 gabbing on Skype. As it shutters, I’m reminded of
a bygone era of online intimacy

I doubt many people are mourning the demise of Skype. The sky-blue platform
that revolutionized the video call, the medium for long-distance relationships
in the early 2010s, had not been relevant for almost a decade when Microsoft
announced its impending death. My own relationship with Skype’s clunky tangle
of video, voice and chat peaked in 2011 – the same year Microsoft purchased it
for a headline-making $8.5bn, only to let it wither in the shadow of
professionalized, less-pixelated options. By 2014, it was basically obsolete,
as video calls shifted to more integrated apps like FaceTime, and my college
schedule did not allow for glitchy, hours-long catchups. Snapchat was far more
efficient.

Like most people, I barely touched Skype from the mid-2010s on; the news that
Microsoft will shutter it on 4 May and fold its data into the free version of
Teams prompted me to log back in for the first time in five years. All that
remained of my formerly thriving Skype life – once a log of video calls picked
up and put down, peppered with chats pleading to “pleaseeeeeeee call me back
bitchhhh (:” – were a handful of spam crypto chats and phishing links from
former favorites who had long quit the platform, as well.
Continue reading...[1]

Links:
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/27/skype-shutting-down (link)