Microsoft Skype gets its thickest update in over a decade – Business Insider
Skype just got its largest update in over a decade as it goes on the defensive against Facebook Messenger
"Skype" is pretty much synonymous with "movie talk" —  Skype, which Microsoft bought for $8.Five billion in 2012, has been downloaded over a billion times on smartphones alone, not including PCs and other gadgets.
And yet, SkypeВ itself hasn’t gotten a major fresh feature or a significant redesign since 2006, when it very first added movie calling. Meantime, Facebook Messenger, a relative newcomer, boasts 1.Two billion users, while Apple’s FaceTime is hugely popular with iPhone and Mac users.В
"We don’t think Skype can rest on its legacy," Skype corporate vice president Amritansh Raghav tells Business Insider.
Today, Skype starts to fire back with a enormous, sweeping fresh upgrade that refreshes the look and adds a bunch of brainy fresh features to both text and movie talk. This "next generation" of Skype will come very first to Android devices, beginning today, with updates to the iOS, Windows, and Mac apps coming later this year.
В "Every little bit has been switched," says Raghav.
Beyond the colorful fresh look, all of the old features, including calling landline telephones, are still there. The general theme with this upgrade is adding a lot more intelligence to Skype, says Raghav, building on last year’s big upgrades to the back-end Skype infrastrcture.
You can call up bots right from within a talk, so you can share the latest developments in the NBA Finals or pull up availability for Warriors tickets, without leaving the conversation. In movie talks, you can share photos, call up some of those same bots, sketch on the screen, add stickers, and use filters. And, yes, there’s a way to share photos with your Skype contacts that works a little bit like Snapchat Stories, because that’s the fresh normal.
With Facebook, against Facebook
Raghav says a big inspiration for this massive Skype overhaul was the feedback the team wasВ getting from customers.
Users, particularly junior users, were using Skype once or twice a week to movie talk withВ their families and friends, but using Facebook’s or Google’s apps for day-to-day talking.В Raghav says it actually speaks to one of Skype’s greatest strengths: It’s where people communicate directly with the most significant people in their lives.В
ByВ contrast, on Facebook, users are attempting to impress a vastly expanded social circle of acquaintances and colleagues. That kind of stage fright might account for why people reportedly aren’t sharing their private lives on Facebook as much as they used to, Raghav suggests.
"Sharing, the most natural of human interactions, is not happening on social networks," says Raghav.В
So the entire point of this fresh design, and all of these fresh features, is to kind of create a private little social world for you and the people closest to you. Your Skype contacts are basically already pre-vetted by you to be the people you care enough about to movie talk with, meaning that you’re likely closer to them than your Facebook friends.В
With the fresh features, Raghav says, Skype is undoubtedly attempting to enhance your relationships with those people: The bots give you things to talk about and games to play, while the fresh movie talk features encourage you to stay on the line longer. The team is even talking about adding official support for streaming Minecraft straight to Skype.
The fresh Skype Highlights feature lets you share sketched-up photos with your Skype team. Yes, it works a little like Snapchat Stories. Microsoft
He sees it as a complement to Facebook, not a competitor: Facebook for everyone, Skype for the inward circle. In the long term, Raghav says he hopes and expects it’ll win over fresh converts as a group talk app like "no others." In the brief term, he hopes it keeps those existing Skype users cheerfully on board for the next decade to come.В
"It meets the needs for a lot of people," says Raghav.
Microsoft Skype gets its thickest update in over a decade – Business Insider
Skype just got its thickest update in over a decade as it goes on the defensive against Facebook Messenger
"Skype" is pretty much synonymous with "movie talk" —  Skype, which Microsoft bought for $8.Five billion in 2012, has been downloaded over a billion times on smartphones alone, not including PCs and other gadgets.
And yet, SkypeВ itself hasn’t gotten a major fresh feature or a significant redesign since 2006, when it very first added movie calling. Meantime, Facebook Messenger, a relative newcomer, boasts 1.Two billion users, while Apple’s FaceTime is hugely popular with iPhone and Mac users.В
"We don’t think Skype can rest on its legacy," Skype corporate vice president Amritansh Raghav tells Business Insider.
Today, Skype starts to fire back with a large, sweeping fresh upgrade that refreshes the look and adds a bunch of brainy fresh features to both text and movie talk. This "next generation" of Skype will come very first to Android devices, embarking today, with updates to the iOS, Windows, and Mac apps coming later this year.
В "Every little bit has been switched," says Raghav.
Beyond the colorful fresh look, all of the old features, including calling landline telephones, are still there. The general theme with this upgrade is adding a lot more intelligence to Skype, says Raghav, building on last year’s big upgrades to the back-end Skype infrastrcture.
You can call up bots right from within a talk, so you can share the latest developments in the NBA Finals or pull up availability for Warriors tickets, without leaving the conversation. In movie talks, you can share photos, call up some of those same bots, sketch on the screen, add stickers, and use filters. And, yes, there’s a way to share photos with your Skype contacts that works a little bit like Snapchat Stories, because that’s the fresh normal.
With Facebook, against Facebook
Raghav says a big inspiration for this massive Skype overhaul was the feedback the team wasВ getting from customers.
Users, particularly junior users, were using Skype once or twice a week to movie talk withВ their families and friends, but using Facebook’s or Google’s apps for day-to-day talking.В Raghav says it actually speaks to one of Skype’s greatest strengths: It’s where people communicate directly with the most significant people in their lives.В
ByВ contrast, on Facebook, users are attempting to impress a vastly expanded social circle of acquaintances and colleagues. That kind of stage fright might account for why people reportedly aren’t sharing their private lives on Facebook as much as they used to, Raghav suggests.
"Sharing, the most natural of human interactions, is not happening on social networks," says Raghav.В
So the entire point of this fresh design, and all of these fresh features, is to kind of create a private little social world for you and the people closest to you. Your Skype contacts are basically already pre-vetted by you to be the people you care enough about to movie talk with, meaning that you’re likely closer to them than your Facebook friends.В
With the fresh features, Raghav says, Skype is certainly attempting to enhance your relationships with those people: The bots give you things to talk about and games to play, while the fresh movie talk features encourage you to stay on the line longer. The team is even talking about adding official support for streaming Minecraft straight to Skype.
The fresh Skype Highlights feature lets you share sketched-up photos with your Skype squad. Yes, it works a little like Snapchat Stories. Microsoft
He sees it as a complement to Facebook, not a competitor: Facebook for everyone, Skype for the inward circle. In the long term, Raghav says he hopes and expects it’ll win over fresh converts as a group talk app like "no others." In the brief term, he hopes it keeps those existing Skype users gladfully on board for the next decade to come.В
"It meets the needs for a lot of people," says Raghav.