Latest news with #JeffTeper
The Hill
05-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Goodbye, Skype: Once-popular video calling service shuts down for good
(NEXSTAR) – After a 21-year run, the once widely-used video chat app Skype is now officially a memory, as of May 5. 'Rest in peace, Skype,' one person wrote on X. 'You served us well.' 'Listen to that iconic Skype ringer one last time,' another urged, adding a clip of the bubbly, slick tone. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Luxembourg, Microsoft-owned Skype has been credited with making video calls easy and affordable for millions of people. US destinations report tourism drops. Will it lead to cheap summer travel? 'Skype has been an integral part of shaping modern communications and supporting countless meaningful moments, and we are honored to have been part of the journey,' Jeff Teper, president of collaborative apps and platforms at Microsoft, in a statement. Teper said the decision to shut down Skype comes as Microsoft looks to 'streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs.' What happens now for Skype users? Skype users will no longer be able to log into their accounts, but they can use the same credentials sign into Microsoft Teams Free on any supported device. One's contacts and chats will be automatically transferred and the user will also see a notification in the Skype app 'prompting you to take action to migrate your data,' according to Microsoft. Why Costco, Sam's Club typically have lower gas prices than other stations Microsoft notes that the following data doesn't migrate to Teams Free: Chats between Skype users and Teams work or school accounts will not be migrated. Users can use Teams Free to start a new conversation with Teams work or school users and enjoy even more functionality. Skype to Skype for Business chat history will not be migrated. 1:1 chat with self history will not be migrated. Private conversations data will not be migrated. Copilot and bots content will not be supported in Teams Free and no chat history will be available. For loyal Skype users who aren't interested in hopping over to Teams, there is also the option to export one's Skype data. Anyone who takes no action and fails to log in to Teams by January 2026 will lose their data. Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion.
Daily Mail
05-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Major Microsoft service permanently shuts down today
By Microsoft has permanently shut down Skype after a 21-year-long run. The tech giant, which bought Skype in 2011, warned users in February that they would no longer have access to their accounts as of May 5, 2025 and urged them to migrate to its free Teams app as soon as possible. Skype's last report showed it had 1.95 billion registered accounts. Microsoft assured users that Teams will meet their needs with its one-on-one calls and group calls, messaging and file sharing. Following the February announcement, Skype shared a message on its X account, saying: 'Over the coming days you can sign in to Microsoft Teams Free with your Skype account to stay connected with all your chats and contacts. 'Thank you for being part of Skype.' Skype launched in 2003 and quickly gained popularity as a way for people to talk to each other without paying a phone company. But once the smartphone-era hit, its users declined and this was exacerbated as similar services such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. 'We've learned a lot from Skype over the years that we've put into Teams as we've evolved teams over the last seven to eight years,' Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, told CNBC. 'We know this is a big deal for our Skype users, and we're very grateful for their support of Skype and all the learnings that have factored into Teams over the last seven years,' he told TechCrunch . It's not clear how many active Skype users there are today, so it's difficult to say how many people will be impacted by the shut down. At its peak in 2016, Microsoft said the calling service had over 300 million users. 'For Skype to cut through and establish a new model of communication, it had to be radically simple, attractive, easy to use, and totally self-contained,' said Nicolas Roope, a British designer and entrepreneur who previously worked on Skype, in a statement. 'And for a while, it worked,' he added. 'Its growth was explosive and the platform became one of the UK's first startup unicorns. 'But Microsoft sees the world differently. Teams is like Skype with heavy chains around its neck – so heavy the original purpose and function often feel impossible. 'Just opening Teams makes me feel like my processor is about to burst into flames, if it even lets me sign in at all.' Microsoft launched Teams in 2016 to build a platform that would allow for cloud communication and collaboration across the company's apps and others. But this new system was in direct competition with Skype. Just two years after the tech giant launched Skype for Business in 2015, it announced plans to retire the service and ultimately did so in 2021. Skype was officially sidelined when Microsoft selected teams as the integrated communications app of choice on Windows 11 that same year. Last December, Microsoft gradually began phasing Skype out by removing the ability for users to add credit to their accounts or purchase Skype phone numbers, pushing monthly subscriptions and Skype-to-phone plans instead. Over the last two years, Microsoft has been steadily rolling out a new-and-improved Teams desktop and web app. 'It's at a high-enough scale that we feel great about the app [Teams] for personal use,' Teper said. 'We feel we have the mileage under our belt on the adoption by consumers, [who are] using Teams in their personal lives. 'We've thought about [shutting down Skype] for a while, but we really felt like the product had to show the end-user adoption with consumers telling us it was ready.'
Daily Mail
05-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Major Microsoft service used by 2bn people permanently shut down TODAY after shock decision
Microsoft announced today that it has shut down Skype after a 21-year-long run. The tech giant, which bought Skype in 2011, warned users in February that they would no longer have access to their accounts as of May 5, 2025 and urged them to migrate to its free Teams app as soon as possible. Skype's last report showed it had 1.95 billion registered accounts. But Microsoft assured users that Teams will meet their needs with its one-on-one calls and group calls, messaging and file sharing. Following the February announcement, Skype shared a message on its X account, saying: 'Over the coming days you can sign in to Microsoft Teams Free with your Skype account to stay connected with all your chats and contacts. 'Thank you for being part of Skype.' Skype launched in 2003 and quickly gained popularity as a way for people to talk to each other without paying a phone company. But once the smartphone-era hit, its users declined and this was exacerbated as similar services such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. 'We've learned a lot from Skype over the years that we've put into Teams as we've evolved teams over the last seven to eight years,' Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, told CNBC. 'But we felt like now is the time because we can be simpler for the market, for our customer base, and we can deliver more innovation faster just by being focused on Teams.' Microsoft said the move was to focus on Teams, which launched in March 2017. In 2024, Skype had 27.8 million daily active users, down from 40 million in 2020, according to Microsoft. The number of minutes people have spent on Teams calls has quadrupled over the last two years, Teper told CNBC. 'We know this is a big deal for our Skype users, and we're very grateful for their support of Skype and all the learnings that have factored into Teams over the last seven years,' he told TechCrunch. It's not clear how many active Skype users there are today, so it's difficult to say how many people will be impacted by the shut down. At its peak in 2016, Microsoft said the calling service had over 300 million users. 'For Skype to cut through and establish a new model of communication, it had to be radically simple, attractive, easy to use, and totally self-contained,' said Nicolas Roope, a British designer and entrepreneur who previously worked on Skype, in a statement. 'And for a while, it worked,' he added. 'Its growth was explosive and the platform became one of the UK's first startup unicorns. 'But Microsoft sees the world differently. Teams is like Skype with heavy chains around its neck – so heavy the original purpose and function often feel impossible. 'Just opening Teams makes me feel like my processor is about to burst into flames, if it even lets me sign in at all.' Microsoft launched Teams in 2016 to build a platform that would allow for cloud communication and collaboration across the company's apps and others. But this new system was in direct competition with Skype. Just two years after the tech giant launched Skype for Business in 2015, it announced plans to retire the service and ultimately did so in 2021. Skype was officially sidelined when Microsoft selected teams as the integrated communications app of choice on Windows 11 that same year. Last December, Microsoft gradually began phasing Skype out by removing the ability for users to add credit to their accounts or purchase Skype phone numbers, pushing monthly subscriptions and Skype-to-phone plans instead. Over the last two years, Microsoft has been steadily rolling out a new-and-improved Teams desktop and web app. 'It's at a high-enough scale that we feel great about the app [Teams] for personal use,' Teper said. 'We feel we have the mileage under our belt on the adoption by consumers, [who are] using Teams in their personal lives. 'We've thought about [shutting down Skype] for a while, but we really felt like the product had to show the end-user adoption with consumers telling us it was ready.'
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Skype is shutting down after 20 years. A look back at 8 other beloved apps from the 2000s that no longer exist.
Microsoft shut down Skype, the internet-based phone and video call service, on Monday, 14 years after the tech company bought it for $8.5 billion. Microsoft announced in February that Skype users could opt into integrating their accounts with Microsoft Teams for free or export all of their data from Skype ahead of the shutdown. Microsoft Teams offers one-on-one and group calls similar to Skype and its more contemporary competitors Zoom, FaceTime, WhatsApp and Google Meet. 'Skype has been an integral part of shaping modern communications and supporting countless meaningful moments, and we are honored to have been part of the journey,' Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, said in a blog post. Skype originally launched in 2003 and quickly gained popularity as an option for users to make free voice calls over the internet to anyone in the world. Three years later, after it was acquired by eBay, Skype launched video calling, making video calls more accessible to the general public. While Skype has been losing users for the last few years, going from around 40 million in March 2020 to around 36 million in February 2023, Skype fans were still saddened by Microsoft's announcement. Several commemorated their fond memories of the platform on social media, sharing clips of Skype's distinct call sound and visuals of how the program's look evolved over the last 20 years. In honor of Skype's demise, we look back at some other beloved apps and social platforms from the 2000s and 2010s that are no longer with us. Vine was a short-form video hosting platform where users could film and upload clips of six seconds or less that would then play on a loop. Four months after it was founded, the company was bought by Twitter for $30 million. After Vine launched as an iOS and Android app in early 2013, it became the most-used video sharing app on the market. By 2015, the app had 200 million monthly active users. The problem with Vine — and why competing platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram Reels went on to succeed — was that it did not have a way for users to earn money directly through their videos. After confronting Vine executives over the lack of profitability in 2016, many top-performing Vine creators started turning to other video platforms to make money. Finally, in October 2016, Vine announced it was going to be discontinued. But several major Vine creators are still in the spotlight thanks to their start on the app, including YouTubers David Dobrik and Jake and Logan Paul, as well as pop singer Shawn Mendes. AOL Instant Messenger (more commonly known as AIM) was an instant messaging service that allowed people to message each other in real time and for free. You would make a custom username and could set 'away' messages, build out profiles with song lyrics and quotes, and send messages to other AIM users at any time, even if they weren't online at the same time you were. There were also chatbots that users could message to get stock updates, weather information or dating advice. By 2000, there were 61 million AIM users; by the mid-2000s, AIM had the largest share of the instant messaging market in North America. It also helped launch much of the internet lingo we still use today, such as 'LOL' ('laugh out loud') and 'BRB' ('be right back'). Soon, other tech companies started launching their own, more advanced messaging platforms, like Google Chat. In December 2017, AIM shared its last away message and announced it would be discontinued, saying, 'The way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed.' Microsoft developed MSN Messenger to compete with AIM. It also required users to create unique usernames and allowed them to write their own statuses and bios. By the mid-2000s, it had evolved into Windows Live Messenger, which, like Skype, started offering audio and video calls as options instead of just instant messaging. In 2009, Microsoft reported that its messaging app had 330 million active users. But three years later, in 2012, the company announced it would be retiring Windows Live Messenger and replacing it with Skype. Friendster is considered one of the original social network sites, predating Facebook (2004) and MySpace (2003), where people could connect with other users, share content on their profiles and message each other. It also helped people find out about local events and up-and-coming bands and bond with strangers over shared interests. By 2008, Friendster had more than 85 million members worldwide — most of them based in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. It was the first global online social network that supported different languages on a single internet domain, so people from all over the world could speak to each other. But in 2009, it started experiencing performance issues and was sold to MOL Global, a payments company in Malaysia, for $39 million. In 2010, MOL sold the intellectual property behind Friendster to Facebook for $40 million. Five years later, the site shut down for good. Picnik was an online photo editing service that allowed users to edit photos, add filters and text, and even combine multiple images for free. In 2010, Picnik was acquired by Google and, two years later, announced that it would be moving its photo editing tools to Google Photos rather than operating as a separate website. After the 2012 announcement, one of the site's original employees, Lisa Conquergood, said, 'Sixty million voices cried out when Picnik died.' Omegle was a website-based online chat service where users didn't need to create an account to speak to people. The site would randomly pair people in one-on-one instant messaging conversations. In 2010, it evolved into pairing random strangers in video chat conversations. Omegle was created by then 18-year-old Leif K-Brooks while he was living at home with his parents. Without any marketing, the site was getting around 150,000 daily visitors within a month after it launched. By the mid-2010s, there were reportedly around 15,000 people on Omegle at any given time. But in 2019, Omegle faced a $22 million lawsuit from a teenager in Oregon who blamed the platform for making her a victim of child sex exploitation. As a result, in late 2023, K-Brooks announced he would be shutting down Omegle because of the stress and expense. 'Over the years, people have used Omegle to explore foreign cultures; to get advice about their lives from impartial third parties; and to help alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation,' K-Brooks wrote. 'Unfortunately, there are also lowlights. Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil, and that is especially true of communication tools, due to their innate flexibility.' Before Reddit's AMAs, Formspring gave anonymous internet users the chance to ask strangers anything they wanted. At its peak, there were over 30 million registered users and over 4 billion posts on the platform. When Formspring's founder and CEO, Ade Olonoh, announced that it would be shutting down in 2013, Forbes reported it had to do with failing to develop a revenue model that could compete with similar platforms, such as Quora and Tumblr. was a question-and-answer social network that launched to compete with Formspring. users would have to create a profile, but they could still be anonymous, and, in 2021, users became able to communicate privately over direct messages. By 2013, the company reached 65 million registered users and was seeing around 190 million unique visitors per month. Over the years, kept rebranding but eventually announced it would be shutting down in December 2024. 'Unfortunately, our 'Ask and Answer' platform no longer meets current needs,' the announcement said, referring to social media platforms like X and Reddit.
The National
05-05-2025
- Business
- The National
Skype hangs up after three decades, marking end to an iconic internet calling service
When Skype was released to the public on August 29, 2003, internet calling was costly and limited to those with the means to access it, and VoIP – voice over internet protocol – would not have rung a bell. It did not take long before that distinctive ring from a Skype call slowly took over, changing the game for internet communications. Its popularity was such that 'Skype' became a verb, much like how 'google' was to searching the web. About 22 years later, Skype makes its final call today, May 5, as its owner Microsoft folds it into its own Teams service. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft acknowledged Skype has been 'an integral part of shaping modern communications', and its retirement is meant to 'streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs', said Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 Collaborative Apps and Platform. It is yet another sad end to a once-dominant platform, probably falling victim to a cut-throat race in the technological age. Before VoIP – also known as internet protocol telephony – mobile or cellular calls required a SIM card. VoIP and Skype eliminated the need for that, as the technology required only an internet connection. The technology had its roots all the way back in 1925, when Bell Laboratories was formed to help AT&T's global communications. Three years later, Bell created Voder, the world's first electronic voice synthesiser. The other key component of VoIP, the internet itself, had its foundations laid in 1969 with the development of Arpanet, the internet's first building block. Several developments later – including fine tuning audio over the internet and improving connectivity – the first VoIP application, Rascal, was launched in 1989, as a means for gamers to talk to each other. Between this time and Skype's launch, two notable VoIP services surfaced: Teleport, considered the first video conferencing service with basic functionality that attracted the attention of Hilton Hotels, and VocalTec, the first commercial VoIP platform. Then, in 2003, Skype rang in a new era for VoIP communications. Skype went by a few names before it became how we know it: it was derived from Skype Peer-to-Peer, then shortened to Skyper, before ultimately dropping the 'r' to utilise available domains at the time. Its parent, Skype Technologies, was founded by Swede Niklas Zennstrom and Dane Janus Friis, while its software was developed by Toivo Annus, Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn, all from Estonia. The platform quickly became famous for offering free voice calls between Skype users and paid ones to telephone numbers. It would eventually add video calls in 2006 on Windows, further cementing its place in internet communications. Its popularity soared that users even put it in their contact details, such as those in business cards and email signatures. Skype began as a start-up, raising $76.85 million through five funding rounds from 2003 to 2010 – beginning with a humble $250,000 and peaking at $50 million – according to data from industry tracker Crunchbase. In between, Skype's first ownership change happened, with e-commerce company eBay buying it for $2.5 billion in 2005. Skype founders Mr Zennstrom and Mr Friis would eventually leave and launch a new streaming video service, the short-lived Joost. But eBay eventually soured on Skype, losing millions and dealing with unprofitability (perhaps annoying ads are not such a bad idea). California-based eBay sold 70 per cent of Skype to a group led by Silver Lake Partners, but not before a lawsuit was filed by Skype's founders over intellectual property copyrights. In 2010, Skype announced plans to go public and raise as much as $1 billion – and this is where things took a strange turn: the company delayed its initial public offering, and it was believed that the IPO plans were just a smokescreen to put the business up for sale. Facebook and Google, still in their infancies, reportedly made bids to value Skype at as much as $4 billion. But all went for naught as Microsoft swooped in and acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011. At its peak, Skype boasted about 300 million users. But, just like how the internet helped propel it into the mainstream, advancements and competition in the World Wide Web also caused its slow decline. At this point, Microsoft – long the ruler of global technology – was now facing challenges from several fronts, including Apple's resurgence and Google's emergence, both of which were changing computing and consumer preferences. While Microsoft did hold its ground – it was increasing its cloud and services game – acquiring Skype would enable it to tap into the growing communications scene. In 2017, Microsoft unveiled Teams. While it was not clear yet at the time if Teams was meant to replace or knock off Skype, both platforms had their own unique propositions, at least according to Microsoft: Skype was meant for home and small business users for up to 20 people, with Skype for Business up to 250, while Teams offered as much as 10,000 and other advanced features such as enterprise-grade security. There are still a number of countries where Skype is blocked – the UAE included – owing to concerns over security and privacy, as well as licensing issues. However, VPNs, or virtual private networks, can provide access to it. In February, Microsoft finally announced that it was retiring Skype. At this point, Skype was not the force it was: at its peak, it boasted as much as 405 million users in 2008, but had since steadily declined, owing to the emergence of other platforms such as Google Meet, Apple's FaceTime, WhatsApp from Facebook that has since become Meta Platforms and other social media apps, and, most notably Zoom, which shot to popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic. Teams itself had a hand in Skype's dwindling numbers. In 2020, Microsoft said Skype had about 40 million users, and the latest figures as of 2023 showed that that was down to 36 million. Teams, in contrast, shot up to about 300 million. Microsoft says the folding of Skype was done to 'streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs'. Teams users, anyway, will still have access to many of Skype's core features, in addition to the former's more advanced services. Microsoft has pledged to make the Skype-to-Teams transition easy. But for the old heads who were able to witness what could be considered the dawn of mass video conferencing, that distinctive Skype tune will forever ring a (free call) bell.
