Skype doesn’t know where it sits at the moment- with competitors like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, WeChat and Snapchat holding majority of the market share Skype seems to be experiencing an existential crisis.

In amidst of this, Amritansh Raghav, VP for Skype has aimed to change this.

Thus, Skype has launched its biggest update since 2006, the acquisition of Skype to Microsoft Office in 2011.

Skype is now not just going to be a conduit of video chat- Microsoft hopes it has released an app that will be used daily by all.

The idea

A “personal network” of family friends and colleagues.

The features

  •  New chat function
  •  A ‘story option’ similar to Snapchat and Instagram- however Microsoft, calls them “Highlights”
  • Cleaner interface
  • Video calls that lets you drag and drop people into conversations
  • Group video chats- which you can send emojis and drop photos into

It will be interesting to watch the popularity of this new interface- to see if it will become an all-encompassing messaging app it so badly inspires to be.

The upside of Skype is that with 300 million monthly users, it its already pre-installed on hundreds of millions of computers around the world- surely this already puts them at an advantage against their components or maybe the phenomenon of the Snapchat ‘dog’ filter is just to enticing for users nowadays- I guess only time will tell.

Want to know more visit their website here.

Images and Videos via: Google & Skype