Goodbye Skype

Vol 27, Issue 19, 7^th March 2025

Social media is now playing a big role in making our lives easy in our day-to-day activities. If you used social media ten or fifteen years ago, you must definitely have known about Skype. It was one of the biggest social media in those days for connecting with each other. However, Microsoft recently announced that they will permanently shut down Skype on May 5, 2025.

The rise of Skype

Skype was introduced in the year 2003 by revolutionizing the communication industry. The service allowed its users to make voice calls, video calls, and text messages easier and cheaper. Especially, this service was very helpful in communicating between countries, rather than sending faxes or physical letters.  When Skype was getting more attention, companies also started to use it for their official communication purposes. Skype had millions of worldwide active users at its peak due to the unique service and benefits of the service.

Downfall of Skype

Despite its long success era, Skype began to lose its popularity among users during the past few years. We can see several key reasons for this downfall.

• New & better alternatives – Apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams & Google Meet became much more popular among users due to the better features compared to Skype. Better video quality and voice quality are the main highlighted points of those new apps.

• Delay in updates – Skype was unable to provide timely updates to maintain an unshakable user engagement. Skype remained the same for a long time while its competitors provided better interferences, security, and faster connections.

• Microsoft’s bias towards the ‘Teams’ – Microsoft bought Skype in 2011. However, the company didn’t give much priority to developing Skype, instead they prioritized ‘Microsoft Teams’.  Experts say this is one of the major reasons for the fall of Skype.

• Performance issues – Since the beginning of the service, Skype has had so many user complaints regarding frequent crashes, poor connection quality, and lagging issues. This made the user migration fast when they found a better alternative.  

However, Skype will end its two decades of supremacy in the communication industry on 5th May 2025, handing over its duties to Microsoft Teams. According to a statement issued by Microsoft, they will fully focus on Microsoft Teams with a better user experience after the farewell of Skype. Even though it is sad to say goodbye to Skype, it shows how the tech world works and moves forward with new initiatives over time.