Goodbye Skype, Old Friend
Hello,
Connection: It’s probably the single greatest contribution of modern technology. There was a time when Skype was the app that connected the most people, the best, all around the world. Now Skype’s death knell is sounding. And dang if the nostalgia doesn’t hit kinda hard.
Before we Zoomed we Skyped. Skype was revolutionary in connecting people around the globe whether it be through video calls, computer to landline, phone to computer. Microsoft bought Skype back in 2011 for a whopping $8.5 billion dollars. On February 28th, 2025 Microsoft announced it will go the way of MySpace (RIP).
Maybe you haven’t used Skype in years and this feels like when that celebrity dies who you already thought was dead. Or maybe you’re like some of the many Skype holdouts who took to social media recently to voice their dismay that their old reliable calling app is going away.
People still use Skype for any number of reasons: It’s what their Grandma knows how to use so they can call her every week. It allows folks to create a US-based phone number they can use if they are overseas so US-based friends, family, and clients can call them without charge. Or it lets people call from a computer to a landline to stay in contact with people in rural places around the world without access to the internet.
Skype will be missed by many, including these users who learned a little about data portability (and local storage) when they heard the news.
As of May 5, 2025, Skype will be essentially shut down, with all existing users moved over to Microsoft’s other video and chat app – Teams – unless they opt to export and delete all their data. It looks like that is at least an eight step process, so it remains to be seen how many users will actually make the effort.
Also, as we pour one out for Skype, let’s take a moment to remember some other old friends no longer with us – MySpace, Vine, YikYak, BeReal, LiveJournal, Periscope, Google+, Geocities, AIM, Digg (but it’s coming back!), even that odd, short-lived AI Humana pin. This trend of our favorite apps and devices eventually dying off, fading away, or getting bought up by someone else is likely going to snowball in our coming tech future.
Which raises the very important question, what about all that personal data? How will you get it back, or move it to that new favorite app, or delete it? How many hours will it take you to sort it all out? What data will move easily and work right away? And what data will struggle to get along with that cool new service? It’s something to think about. We live our lives online these days. It’s getting to be more important than ever that we have a way to transfer those digital lives when apps die, devices get bricked, and services no longer suit us.