Live data from Hacker News

Skype group video calling becomes free

blogs.skype.com

11–20 of 169 posts

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#11
post #3

I hope TextSecure/Whisper will get to have video-calling, too, soon. People need to stop using insecure platforms like Skype that make mass spying so easy.

Video calling in Jitsi works fantastically right now. There's little excuse for people still using proprietary video conferencing platforms.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#15
post #4

I feel like this was the only thing on the premium feature list that even mattered. Does skype even generate revenue?

Looks like they're just getting rid of it for now. They added this note to http://www.skype.com/en/premium/:

Now that group video calls are free for everyone, we’ve removed Premium to give it a refresh. But don’t worry, you can still call phones worldwide at great low rates with our subscriptions.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#17
Nice! Paying a premium for this was a bummer, but it does still work better than all of Skype's competitors, in my opinion. The primary problem of Hangouts and whatever else is out there is audio echo. I don't know if that problem is simply unsolvable in Flash or what, but Skype has handled it much better. All you need is one person on your Hangout call who doesn't mute their mic and the experience is a disaster, unfortunately.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#18

cool. anybody using conference call equipment for skype? We have tried some logitech quipment to connect 2 offices ( http://www.logitech.com/de-de/product/tvcam-hd ) which didn´t work out very well. any recommendations?

Why not have everyone call in from their own machine? This way, it normalizes the communication bandwidth between everyone, no one feels like it's harder to be heard. A big failing of many remote teams I've seen is when they try to "strap on" a remote team. But if you can minimize the feeling of "real office vs virtual office" it works a lot better.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#19
post #3

I hope TextSecure/Whisper will get to have video-calling, too, soon. People need to stop using insecure platforms like Skype that make mass spying so easy.

Video calling in Jitsi works fantastically right now. There's little excuse for people still using proprietary video conferencing platforms.

wow, cool. i´ll give it a try to connect our offices... looks really great!

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#20
post #4

I feel like this was the only thing on the premium feature list that even mattered. Does skype even generate revenue?

I purchase Skype credit and use it when I need to call companies in other countries. It's very inexpensive. I've also used their feature that let's you attach a phone number to your Skype account before when travelling.
Post reply on HN