And social media went well and truly mainstream. Live Messenger typically boasted around 40 million simultaneous active users – 10 million more than Skype's headline-chasing 30 million.
Home users could chat using Live Messenger, while business folk could enjoy a full communications suite in the form of Microsoft Lync.Īnd get this. Microsoft had already incorporated videoconferencing technology into its own software.
But what's even more baffling is that Microsoft might not have needed Skype. Was the writing on the wall? Was Skype less "wunderkind" and more "kinda cursed"? eBay got there first, purchasing the videoconferencing app in 2005 before selling it on for $1.2 billion less than it had paid. Microsoft wasn't the first to buy Skype, either. And in 2010, the company had operated at a seven-million-dollar loss. Skype's cool-kid persona concealed a chunky $686 million debt. Perhaps Microsoft's $8.5 billion buyout wasn't as much of a bargain as it seemed.Įven back in 2011, journos were scratching their heads over the deal. So what happened? How did Skype go from the golden child of videoconferencing to a technological turkey?Įight-and-a-half billion dollars well spent? Kids just don't Skype each other anymore. In the States, Skype had a four per cent market share – a minuscule figure compared to Zoom's 60%.īut perhaps the most damning evidence of Skype's demise is its disappearance from cultural discourse. Things are looking even bleaker across the pond. In comparison, Teams boasted 20% and Zoom 55%. A little over a decade later, Skype has lost its throne – unseated by relative upstarts like Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft's own Teams.Īccording to one study, Skype held on to just seven per cent of the UK videoconferencing market share in 2021. And Microsoft was, it seemed, keen to snaffle some of that cultural cred for itself. You didn't "call somebody on Skype", you " Skyped them".
Like Google and Photoshop before it, it had broken free of the world of nouns and become a bona fide verb. Heck, it had even entered the annals of the English language. And at its peak in March of 2011, it boasted 30 million simultaneous users – all online at the same time. It allowed for (mostly) seamless voice and video calling, at a time when that sort of thing felt a little bit magic. Skype was the go-to app for catching up with friends from afar. Microsoft has announced its acquisition of Skype for a whopping $8.5 billion. Fashionable types are colour-blocking their wardrobes to within an inch of their lives.Īnd among all this cultural brouhaha, a momentous tech deal has taken place. LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" is riding high in the UK charts. Marvel's Thor is blockbuster-ing its way through the world's cinemas.