F
[deleted]
RIP Skype
31–40 of 87 posts
Re: RIP Skype
#32Early one morning in August 2007 I was asleep in my apartment in Leiden and I got a call from my boss Dirk-Willem van Gulik to tell me that 1) Skype was having a global outage, 2) we had to help anyway we could, 3) scope, budget, people, nothing would get in our way. At the time we were working on Joost, a crazy startup that was founded by Skype's Janus and Niklas. We built 3 networks, in 3 countries, in a matter of…
Skype was an intelligence-gathering platform with very few equals. In the era that Skype was producing unicorn horns, surveillance capitalism was on a rocket ride. I doubt those same conditions would allow for multiple unicorn horns in the modern era. You can't build a Skype-like surveillance network now; that horse has left the barn.
What about discord?
Re: RIP Skype
#33[deleted]
Re: RIP Skype
#34Let's hope Teams is next in line
Everyone I know who uses Teams does not like it. Is that selection bias based on my personal network of technically savvy peers and professionals, or is it founded in a broader experience? More importantly, does Microsoft really believe this is a winning product? Are they that out of touch with their customer base?
Teams as a Zoom competitor is fine. It works perfectly well as video calling / conferencing software.
Teams as a Slack competitor is abysmal. Absolutely unusable for anything other than the most basic communication needs.
Re: RIP Skype
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone I know who uses Teams does not like it. Is that selection bias based on my personal network of technically savvy peers and professionals, or is it founded in a broader experience? More importantly, does Microsoft really believe this is a winning product? Are they that out of touch with their customer base?
I’ve never met anyone who chose to use Teams. My organization forces me to use it. I don’t like it, but to its credit, it is better than “Skype for business.” It’s strange to me how companies take these huge messaging brands and then just burn them down (Skype, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google’s chatbominations, even AIM). As a user, they don’t fizzle out due to user disinterest, it’s always the owner just sort…
The issue is that they have working tools which work in one period, but fail to adapt to change.
AIM, Yahoo, MSN etc. were mostly plain text systems, built around presence and a single client. Then came mobile phones, with unreliable connections, with messengers which allowed integrating pictures etc. and easy sign up (iMessage by using apple ID, which every iPhone user has; Whatsapp by using phone number which directly linked the contacts), which worked without battery draining connection.
Skype originally worked by making random clients "super nodes" which coordinated the network, without needing a big data center managing it all. Making phones super nodes wasn't an option so they had to change their protocol in big ways.
So adapting was a cost and changed user experience, while newcomers grew.
In case of Google there was the addition of missing strategic leadership, where each team built their own new messenger, but nobody maintained any old one.
Re: RIP Skype
#36I liked the Skype Out function allowing you to call any phone from the Skype app using whatever WiFi or data you could find while traveling. If anyone’s looking for the same functionality without anything complicated I did some research and ended up with the Viber app. It’s a social network which you don’t have to use at all, and provides the same function as Skype Out to call regular phones.
After Viber was pinged for delivering Pegasus spyware, I switched to RebTel. Works fine.
https://cyberinsider.com/viber-messenger-abused-for-deliveri...
Re: RIP Skype
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone I know who uses Teams does not like it. Is that selection bias based on my personal network of technically savvy peers and professionals, or is it founded in a broader experience? More importantly, does Microsoft really believe this is a winning product? Are they that out of touch with their customer base?
Teams as a Zoom competitor is fine. It works perfectly well as video calling / conferencing software. Teams as a Slack competitor is abysmal. Absolutely unusable for anything other than the most basic communication needs.
I think this is exactly why it's getting all the hate. People being forced to migrate from Slack to Teams. Not only do they lose years of archives, but the UX and features are a huge downgrade for such an essential tool.
If it was zoom -> teams, i don't think anyone would care so much.
Re: RIP Skype
#38Who do y'all use for a dialable USA phone number these days? (I'm in England.)
I have (had) a +1-423 Skype number to receive calls (twice a month or so) that took messages that I could play in the Skype web-app.
Re: RIP Skype
#39Teams doesn’t have Skype calling, except in its expensive business plans and with a Phone Plan add-on.
Skype had quality issues, but at least it was easy to charge it and call. It’s got worse now with teams.
Re: RIP Skype
#40I liked the Skype Out function allowing you to call any phone from the Skype app using whatever WiFi or data you could find while traveling. If anyone’s looking for the same functionality without anything complicated I did some research and ended up with the Viber app. It’s a social network which you don’t have to use at all, and provides the same function as Skype Out to call regular phones.
After Viber was pinged for delivering Pegasus spyware, I switched to RebTel. Works fine. https://cyberinsider.com/viber-messenger-abused-for-deliveri...
That wasn't a zero-click infection attempt. You had to actually click on the link to get infected. This could happen on any service that allows you to send links.