Skype 4.0

A Redesign at Skype
By BRAD STONE, NY Times

Skype, eBay’s Internet phone division, has always been something of a problem child for the e-commerce giant.

The service is growing like a weed, with 309 million registered users. It earned $126 million in the first quarter, exceeding what eBay and PayPal earned at similar age.

Yet considering eBay paid $2.6 billion for Skype in 2005 and last year took a massive write-down on the acquisition, investors and industry observers still view Skype through the thick, dreary lens of disappointment.

Now eBay hopes to give them a new pair of glasses. Tuesday night the company will make available a test of a new version of the program, called Skype 4.0, which it says is the most dramatic redesign of the calling service in its short five-year history.

Josh Silverman, Skype’s president, says it was time to evolve Skype’s user interface. The service started out by offering free audio calls but has gradually added other kinds of communication, like video calls, file-sharing, and text chats. The main purpose of the upgrade, he said, is to bring all those modes together and make it easier to switch between them in a single conversation.

“If I were to sum it all up, that is what 4.0 is about: the next leap forward in integrated communications,” he said.

The full article can be found at: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/a-redesign-at-skype/index.html?th&emc=th