https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=s...
Maybe a lot were like me, and simply didn't care enough to keep using it.
So here we have Microsoft trying to leverage an existing brand (Skype) into new territory (social media). The technical aspect or what users actually want is a afterthought.
Microsoft could release their own alternative to current social media apps but they won't just start small and build a new brand.
Did someone mention Skype for Business? (... Live 360 ME)
I made a comment about this in a similar vain: Mozilla wants to overload the Firefox name to the point where it's totally meaningless. The success of the Firefox name is no doubt the reason but this fails to recognize that's not how names work. This direction is exactly the reason why Nintendo called their console "WiiU" and that turned out about as well as this ultimately will.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Firefox being the name of a single product. The entire underlying premise of this redesign is flawed.
Uncomfortable, yes. Strange, no. Very common for "enterprise" conference services to do this.
I find I can type, say, jsmith123 into the search box and I'll somehow either get multiple users listed as having that username or a bunch of similarly named accounts, possibly ranked higher than the one I explicitly typed in.
It's really unintuitive and contrary to how people use Skype. It's using the method whatsapp, telegram, et.al use, but they don't really have a discoverability feature. You know someone, or you don't until you know someone who does.
Skype should either have just ditched the username search or embraced it. They tried to make it both, but they really didn't pull it off well, and now there is an entire subset of the userbase you cannot find with their find feature.
This last one on OSx has been particularly bad though. Its just so slow at doing even basic tasks like chatting.
I think it's important to include at least one free video chat app when doing a comparison. Have you tried Jitsi Meet[0]?
[0]: https://meet.jit.si/
A link just to make sure: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
Wait what? I have, at least for personal communications, the exact opposite experience. Skype video often cuts out and pauses, or even entirely drops the connection, at which point me and my friend(s) either switch over to FaceTime (if they have iDevices as well, since its by far the most reliable in my experience) or WhatsApp video (decently reliable and pretty much everyone has it).
No idea what they were smoking when they decided that their target customer was Snapchat users. Skype is still relevant to me in 2018 because their core streaming tech is in my experience still more stable/reliable than Hangouts/FaceTime/Slack etc. Often Skype still connects on a crappy network when these other apps fail. This alone has made it my go-to for mission critical video chats. All I could do was cringe in embarrassment when trying to schedule business meetings and seeing those squiggles pop up all over the place.
Skype UX doesn’t need to be “fun”. It just needs to be usable. Kudos to the powers that be for making a tough call to benefit their core userbase.