Goodbye Skype. And Thank you.

If you’re reading this, you probably don’t know me. I go by Mat on the platform and I am a member of the core team here at Cafetalk. Although I am registered as a tutor it's been a while since I taught anything and I usually keep my tutor profile hidden. I never post on the column either, but today I’m crawling out of my comfort zone in hopes that someone might read this and share a sad moment with me.

So this morning I woke up to the news that Microsoft will be closing Skype in May.

My first thought was, “Oh man, this is going to create a lot of work for us…”

And indeed, by the end of our morning shift, we were flooded with tons of inquiries from both students and tutors who were concerned as to whether they would be able to continue their lessons after Skype was gone.

The short answer to those concerns would be - don’t worry. We will consider all possible alternatives (including in-house production) so that you can still take and deliver lessons seamlessly on our platform. We’ve got this.

But I am not writing this post because I wanted to reassure you. There’ll be more announcements about the transition out of Skype and its replacement later.

Today, I just wanted to take a moment to grieve and say goodbye to a truly, truly amazing application.

If you’re old enough like me, you should remember the days when you heard of this upcoming software that allowed you to call anyone around the world. And it was free! It sounded too good to be true, and yet there it was. With a click of a button I could call friends across the Pacific Ocean and talk for hours like we were right there in person.

In this day and age of ubiquitous peer-to-peer communication I think it’s easy to forget how crazy this technology was when it came out. Not only did Skype perfectly navigate the internet to establish a line between you and your friend, in cases where that was difficult due to a firewall or another one of hundreds of technical obstacles, it would route your call though their own servers (costing them a fortune in the process) so that you could talk about meaningless stuff without worrying about the bill.

That was 2003. And since then this miraculous tool has supported billions of conversations, and through those conversations made it possible for countless friendships, relationships and all manner of connections to thrive.

For me personally, Cafetalk would not have been possible without Skype. It's the one thing that made it possible for us and many other communities like us to come into existence. And for that I am very, very grateful.

So thank you Skype.

And thank you to everyone who made it happen from the original folks who developed it to Microsoft for keeping it alive. Hope you know that you’ve made a difference.