Skype

If you never heard of Skype you’re up for finding out about a standard in nowadays communication technology. It’s an instant messenger annex communication application not only featuring video chat and voice call functionality, but a lot more as we’ll detail later on.

Skype, a versatile communication solution used by millions simultaneously

So, let’s detail some of the Skype features which might be of interest to you. Skype is an instant messenger (IM) annex voice chat solution. Once you register your unique Skype name you may be listed in the directory and you’re ready to start communicating.

Voice chat can be used for telephone calls, text chat features support for groups chats including emoticons and keeping a history, online status indicators, user profiles, among other typical IM features.

What makes Skype rather particular is the fact it can also be used to call landlines and one can even obtain an online number, also known as SkypeIn, the latter enabling you to be called by conventional phone subscribers dialling a local phone number, hence you can receive those calls on your computer.

Skype’s international call market share is rising steadily and actually used by millions of simultaneous online users.

As such, here you have an application that supports not only instant messaging and voice calls, but also conference calls, video chats and even screen sharing. Many of its features are free, some require you to buy credit, but you can start using Skype discovering all the free features. It will enable you to communicate in a variety of ways with others, on computers or mobile devices, all over the world. It features a user-friendly graphical interface which opens a whole new world of communication possibilities using your computer, a microphone and a webcam.

For the technically interested, Skype uses the so-called Skype protocol, a proprietary internet telephony Voice over IP (VoIP) network. It operates peer-to-peer (P2P) model and uses various audio and video codecs.

More than a decade of Skype history

In the year 2003 Skype was created and its first public beta version released, to be acquired by eBay only two years later and in 2011 it finally ended up in the hands of Microsoft where it became a proper division and the product Skype is still part of its software portfolio. Moreover, it even officially replaced the famous Microsoft Live Messenger in 2013, but that’s another story we won’t detail here.

Skype is actually available for various types of platforms, including iOS, Android, OS X, Linux, BlackBerry, among others, but here you can actually download the version for the Windows platform.

Conclusion about Skype

If you’re running a Windows operating system on your computer equipped with a microphone and a webcam, you might be particularly interested in Skype, a renown communication product belonging to the same company that made your operating system, hence it will function without a problem on your modern computer. Download and install Skype now and become part of the modern world where communication takes place on another level. Millions have Skype installed yet and are simultaneously online, so why shouldn’t you?