Skype Gets Pre-Record Video Messaging

End of an eraSkype is testing a messaging option with a limited number of Mac, Android and iOS users so they will be able to send pre-recorded videos of themselves to friends and family. Although a Microsoft-owned company, the update is not yet being made available on Windows Phone or PC.

Microsoft is also migrating its Windows Messenger users over to Skype so it can finally shut its doors in March after 12 years. Once one of the biggest instant messaging platforms in the world, in 2010, Messenger had 300m people in 76 countries using it, but competition from Facebook, OTT messaging services and Skype itself have led Microsoft to combine the two services. Today, Skype has 280m users.

In 2010, Jeff Kunins, the then group program manager at Windows Messenger, wrote a blog post that now sounds more like an obituary: “Like Hotmail, Messenger is one of the largest scale communication and sharing services in the world, with a strong 10 year history of reliability, performance, and innovation.

"We're particularly proud of Messenger's role in the history of helping people connect, communicate, and share online with the people they care about most, and we're working hard every day on new ways for Messenger to keep playing that role as a great partner to the modern web ecosystem around us.”

He is now GM Product at Skype.