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Skype Users Slam Microsoft's Attempt To Infuse App With Social Media Magic (theregister.co.uk)
Last month Skype announced a major update to its messaging and video calling app. The update brought a visual revamp, as well as "social features" such as Highlights that were first introduced by Snapchat. At any rate, it turns out, people are not enjoying the update as much as Microsoft had hoped. From a report: Reviews of the Android and iOS versions of the app have been mostly terrible, and those posted to the Windows App Store have not been much better. Chief among the issues is that the redesign imagines Skype as a youth-oriented social media app along the lines of Instagram or Snapchat, rather than a staid business communications tool. "This new app is absolutely terrible," observes an individual posting to Google Play under the name Kulli Kelder. "Skype is mostly used by people for professional use or for connecting with friends far away. This looks as far from simple and professional as it can be. Skype does NOT need to be Snapchat
." The Skype team clearly has a different view of its work. "We think it's the best Skype we've ever built -- inside and out -- and it's been designed to make it easier for you to use for your everyday communications," the company said last month. A few individuals have expressed similar enthusiasm, but among those reviewing the most recent update, one-star ratings dominate. Of the 20 most-recent reviews posted to the iTunes App Store, 19 out of 20 award one star out of five. The other is two stars.
for the better. Seriously. Change today means "making everything worse". Without exceptions.
From my perspective Skype was starting to make major inroads into corporate networks to replace other video conferencing systems in addition to being what younger consumers used. It was fairly unobtrusive and cross-platform. Then MS had to buy them and change their focus. Now it's all about chasing the cool which MS was never good at doing.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
https://ring.cx/
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
I think it's because change for good goes unnoticed. For example FitBit Charge HR 2. The design is much different from version 1, yet it is much better.
Probably the biggest failing here is not understanding what Skype is. The biggest problem is that the changes fundamentally redefine what Skype is; but Skype's users used it for what it was: simple video conferencing.
No, I will not work for your startup
"We think it's the best Skype we've ever built..."
This statement may even be true, since it's coming from an MS employee. However, it still doesn't change the fact that Skype was better before the MS buyout.
...Kill all the Marketing executives that fuck shit up instead.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
In the last month or so I've had three updates to apps that have been terrible
1. WeatherBug used to be the best weather app by far, but a recent upgrade made it unusable so I switched to weatherunderground
2. Hulu revamped their app with terrible Ux as a result. I now avoid Hulu unless I'm watching on my Tivo which has not updated yet (and I hope it won't).
3 Now skype.
Is this bad SW engineering or Sw engineers being forced into bad decisions by managers that don't get that Ux is not just about eye candy it's also about how easy it is for a user to achieve what they want to do with as little effort as possible. To me, at least, usability out weighs eye candy every time
...Skype does NOT need to be Snapchat ....
Obviously, Microsoft thinks it does. Microsoft is being left behind by the world of social media. So Microsoft wants to use Skype the same way they used Zune --- an attempt to play catch-up with the market leaders.
I don't care what anyone says, systemd is a huge improvement over Skype. Improvement right there, taste it, bro.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
My 20-something galpal just let off a long litany of gripes about Skype into my ear just yesterday, so it's not just old 1960s model nerds like me that think the changes are complete dogsh*t. But it's by god got a whizzy new sine wave "i'm working on it" animation, so it must be good right? Idiots.
Someone needs fired for this.
Skype and SfB don't play well together either. I've had MANY tickets from my users who can't connect to our SfB contacts from a normal Skype account. Making it even more confusing is the two icons, they are the same color just inverse of each other. We would have to go and have some "end user education", enable auto-login on SfB, and uninstall Skype all the time. For awhile we had our EU business division on an EU-based tenancy, and us on a US-based one. Even in SfB, often one side couldn't see if the other was online; it would just say "presence unknown". We finally had to make a decision; since corp HQ was in Ireland. the entire company had to switch over to an IE tenancy to get everything MS related like that to work "properly".
I'm so sick of that kind of talk. It isn't "because of aging", but because things are really made to be worse and worse.
That's theft of service. File a criminal complaint and also file a lawsuit in small claims court to get more than your money back.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So Microsoft finally commented:
We’re confident that as we continue to listen to users and provide updates to the app with new features and functionality, we’ll be able to keep improving the experience.
So the usual marketing blabla of "improving your experience". When, for crying out loud, is a company going to admit that they were wrong and going to reverse course??! Just for once, please. Just say "Oops, sorry. We hear you; here's the previous version." Now that would be really listening to your customers.
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
This is Skype and Microsoft we're talking about. The very first thing Microsoft did when they bought Skype was to change it to make it worse. They threw away the P2P functionality that gave users better privacy than other programs.
Well I didn't "se" any "goats" there. It's actually a legit site/project, it seems.