Goodnight Skypecasts
At Skype, our aim is to offer products that delight people and enable the world’s conversations. Part of our vision means coming up with new ways for our community of more than 338 million registered users to stay in touch.
Skypecasts is one of the many features that we’ve developed to enable these conversations. What we’ve learned by watching how the product is used and through user feedback is that Skypecasts is not quite measuring up to our high standards and expectations for connecting and delighting our users.
As a result, we have made the decision to retire Skypecasts from active service for the immediate future, effective 12 noon BST on Monday, 1st September 2008.
This decision is consistent with Skype’s efforts to prioritise resources towards the products and areas of innovation that that will have the biggest impact on the Skype community.
Philosophically, we continue to believe in the concept of Skypecasts – group communication on a specific topic of interest. As such, we will look for ways to reintroduce this functionality in a way that lives up to both our and our community’s high standards.
To those people who regularly enjoy hosting and taking part in Skypecasts, we apologise for the inconvenience and hope we’ll be able to release a new and improved Skypecasts product in the not too distant future. We’ll be sure to let you know when that day arrives.
Hi,
Me and all the other people I have met in Skypecasts are highly disappointed with casts closing down. Claiming that the casts were discontinued because this service couldn’t delight the community is in our opinion the biggest lie that could be told. I don’t know a single Skypecast user who wasn’t amazed about this service. There were some small flaws like morons hacking, some kids yelling and playing music on casts, only 3 people able to speak at a time but the overall benefits that everyone got from this feature made us delighted and not care about the minor problems.
* We were able to practice English.
* We were able to make new friends all over the world.
* There were some very interesting topics to discuss on.
* It was amazing possibility to see how people in different countries tend to think about certain problems.
* Wars, terrorism and other troubles in the world exist because people are not communicating and having discussions with each other. That was one thing that Skypecasts made possible. So the casts were making world a better place.
* Skypecasts were bringing closer different religions.
* People of all ages could have a discussion with each other.
If Skype wants money then I have no problems paying them some dollars a month for such a great service but closing them down all together smells like fish to me. I will really not buy into the explanations you have told the community why the casts were shut down. Actually you don’t have the community any more.
If you respect your users then please give us the real reasons why the casts were terminated. Sounds like someone had a problem with freedom of speech to me.
But we will move on. I see no reason to prefer Skype right now, there are enough services out there that serve as well as Skype does. All of my friends have MSN or YAHOO messenger and both of them allow webcam and voice. I can only see people who need conference call support to stick to Skype.
If you remove such a unique service as Skypecast was, that attracted so many users then you must have a very “GOOD” reason for doing so. But if you don’t have balls to tell this to your community then users can’t respect and trust this company.
Really, if you had some financial problems, you could take some payment for opens new casts. As for me (and, I’m sure – for many other skype-users) — it would be more better, then just close skype-casts. Be sure, I’ll be paying some reason price for ability to open my casts.
Geez, maybe some of you who are screaming about how unfair this is ought to realize that Skype is a BUSINESS that YOU DO NOT OWN, and that you were getting Skypecasts FREE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I used to love Skypecasts, too. But the standards were getting bad. I stopped using them because every time I did, I got contacted by some jerk trying to get me involved in an MLM program or something else. Plus, a lot of the Skypecasts were virtually pornographic. Whatever the reasons, Skype has a right to take them down. What’s the downside? That some people will go to another FREE service?
I seriously doubt Skypecasts represented the major part of Skype’s business model. Are you kidding? This is not the “death of Skype.” I use it for IM and phone calls and I will continue to do so. It’s great for that, and that’s the original reason I got on board and now PAY for services.
Grow up, people.
Ok so if the problem is that SkypeCast is not conform to the “High Level of Standards” then i can imagine that this statement is due to the architecture of this system. Finally is easy to say: Freedom
If I’m a terrorist and would to spread my ideas of death all over the world i can open a skypecast and spread my message of death to people, but almost this is called freedom.
If YouTube apply a restricted content filtration and really not allow publication of copyrighted content then YouTube will be nothing more than a Spam Portal with 90% of stupid videos and then the users will drop from 100Millions to 100 Thousands.
Well restrictions on freedom causes pain for the Humans and this notice of closed skypecasts is a terrible mistake from Skype, where instead of freedom they need to protect the stupid political and religious pressure upon this tool of great liberty.
Well people just in case look for OpenSource alternatives to skypecast
I thought it was a rumour started in this blog. Now I see it is real and boy am I very dissapointed. Why was this not announced on the front page and whatever happened to parallel implementations? Turn off the old one when the new one is running.
I am just curious, and would appreciate it very much, if you could educate me in relation to something, who made the decision to stop all ” Skypecasts ” and furthermore, is ( He/Her/Them ) fully cognizant with what a ” comprehensive psychiatric evaluation ” is ? if not they need to visit there general practitioner, ( GP ) for immediate referral
( Hotmrw )
I have read this and was very sad:
>What we’ve learned by watching how the product is used and through user feedback
>is that Skypecasts is not quite measuring up to our high standards and expectations
>for connecting and delighting our users.
I want to notice that the quality of skype conference (the only feature, one can use instead of casts) is significantly worse than the quality of casts. Especially with more, than 20 parties. So, to be consecutive, you have to make the decision to retire Skypeconference from active service, havn’t you?
Confucius said ” Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves ” I find this relvant in the context of my skype experience, as I watched with much pleasure opposing groups fight, play and learn and finally bury each other. See what happened is the fight was taken out of skype as groups tried to dominate by censoring opposing groups by dobbing them in. The big boys stepped in and shut down skype and muted our voices.
So on that note I would like to thank all the skype personalities, and the casts run by the comspiracy theorist, religious extremists and moderates, Skypeassholes, the happy casts, the singing casts and the whatever casts. In particular The fight cast by the enigmatic His Highness From India and his anti US US doorman. I would also like to thank all the wonderful individuals I met on skype that I would never have otherwise met without Skypes innovative software.
What I liked about Skype was the purity of its debate and vigour and youthfullness of all the characters. It kind of reminded me of my more youthful days back in 1989 when anything goes, and if you don’t understand how it felt listen to ” All summer long ” by Kids Rock.
The most famous and most certainly over used phrase was “send me that link” for all its worth facts are only 10% of the story and there value is proportional to applied intelligence. If you can figure that out your on the way.
And Finally Skype was social networking medium were FREEDOM of Speech conquered all before it. So get your shovels out and start digging for the fight has only just started.
Diamond signing off
one problem i noticed about skypecasts was how its servers distributed people. some casts would have 100 people, while others had 2. you should make it so every cast has an even number of 20 or so people, and balance it out. this is related to who is listed on the live tab. some casts are listed there for hours and some never. someone should reprogram that so everyone gets listed for 5 seconds and keep rotating rather than keeping the same ones on live all the time, that way the numbers would be evenly distributed.
WILL YOU GOOD PPL STOP STATING WE WILL PAY TO USE SKYPECAST. we will NOT be paying for skypecasts as speech is and ALWAYS WILL be FREE, YEAH ITS A BIG LOSS TO US but its not the end of the world THE PPL HERE AT SKYPE SAID they are going to improve SKYPECASTS i mean u would agree CASTS need improving RIGHT so let them improve. surely skype wouldnt lie to the ppl who made skyping a sucsess AND im sure they know who the hackers are like HIGHNESS ,SNAKE ,BOBDEAVER, FREEDOM IS AMERICA, ETC these guys will no longer be able to hack BUT IN SAYING THAT it was all a lttle suspicious that they shut this down when the elections are going to on and a very special anniversary NAMLEY 911 one last thing if skype could give the public an update of casts or where to find these updates or even offering an alternative we would be overwhelmed, THANK YOU FOR READING
its not the end of the world ,there is an alternative for a skypecasts which is a (PaltalkScene) you can download it and use it like a skypecasts and is free
Doesn’t skype use OUR bandwith for service? Why don’t you all just stop using it right now instead of posting here? This is the only way Skype will take you all seriously.
TO SKYPE: This is probably the worst idea you’ve had since you failed to implement caller id in the USA. Well done!
Hi! all
I’m speaking for the housebound people who have used this service to communicate with the outside world.
Personally I’m a clinical depressive and when my music cannot get me out of the fugue I resort to speaking to my friends on Skypecast.
Now I feel alone without any contact with the outside world and wonder why I continue.
I know I can go on services like MIRC. They are wonderful services BUT they need typing in which restricts the voice communication of Skypcast.
I. as a clinically depressive and need the immediate voice contact of Skypecast to keep me functioning.
I beg you , as a lot of people like me rely on this service to re-instate it as soon as possible as we are all on the edge. For this comment you should know what I mean.
the people who programmed Skypecasts bailed out
because they could never get Skypecasts working right
and they never will
so its best that they did give up
but they should not of ran off giving a poor excuses over there poor programming knowledge.
this is a poor excuses
((Skypecasts wasn’t quite measuring up to our high standards and expectations for connecting and delighting our Skype community.))
the truth is
there programmers wasn’t quite measuring up to our high standards and expectations for connecting
THE END
and the TRUTH
I will be honest. Skypecasts had some flaws in it. For example no Moderation by any skype individual. I mean people were opening all types of rooms that promoted propaganda against many things like religion, politics. I mean skype was spammed by many of these individuals. And there was a huge lack of support on Skype’s part. You could open a room and would be unable to close it till it’s time limit expired. Now that’s a loss of resources. People are in the room with no host since he was unable to close it. So all the spam chat going on in the room was never being monitored or altered in any way.
I would have loved to pay for skype services if they were at least close to being perfected. The last few days I have been thinking about signing up for the Unlimited USA and Canada calling plan but I don’t know for sure how good it will be. Same for skypecast. I wouldn’t mind using it for a couple of dollars. It was fun, great and a very enthusiastic place to spend time at. Not to mention some of the very informative skypecasts I have been to. Of course as I said earlier a lot of abuse of the system was going on including vulgarity.
Skype it’s not the service that was living up to your measures it’s basically you who didn’t manage the service correctly or expand your resources. Rather you backed out of it. The first problem is with skype protocol. They have set up their own system rather then go with the general sip protocol being used widely. Which puts a lot of load on their services. Which of course don’t get me wrong are great but do need resources which they were unable to provide. Even if their system is better. So what. If I am going to use your calling plans I will call people who are using either land lines or SIP. At the end it is going to be the same quality.
I hope you guys do return soon with a whole new skypecast. A much better skypecast. We would love to use your services again.
Good Luck!!
i doubt moderation will change. you can have a right wing extremist being a moderator and skype would be just as bad if not worse. as to being able to close a room. honestly, i dont think many people care about that. thats like saying u dont like the font that skype uses. its really not that important. on to more important issues. everytime skype has more than 30 people in a cast, it tends to freeze many peoples computers. im sure there is something simple skype can do to solve this issue. out of all the programs that i have on my pc, id say skypecasts, drain the most resources out of my computer. i often see my cpu usage at 100% and memory usage of over 70m. again, this can be changed, but skype has to put in the money to do this. you cant just expect to pay someone in india or japan 5 cents an hour and have it turn out good.
they are shooting themselves in the foot by doing this and damagin the skype community
They were forced to close it by CIA and Israeli intelligence. More than half of the Skypecast were in Arabic. Could be plotting terrorist activities! Unable to break the encryption so……
I downloaded Skype around 2004 and I’ve had a Paid Subscription since 2005 for Skypeout and Skypein.
When Skypecasts were brought into service I recall thinking that SOMEONE would realize that Skypers had, in effect, the ability to run something like their own Talk-Radio Show, with the Host being able to control who spoke, and when. There were NO annoying Commercial interruptions, no traffic reports, no news etc. I felt sure that someone would eventually realize that they were giving away too much for free. So colour me cynical!
It’s been said that Skype HI-JACKS each user’s computer BANDWITH, and due to this ‘technical theft’ a few experts wrote blogs which opposed Skype. I found I didn’t mind the bandwith issue as I found the casts delivered many hours of entertainment which was more compelling than anything on television or radio….mainly because we had a chance to talk back!
I’m convinced the owners will launch a new product, with a fee structure which will bring them an INCOME STREAM. As many of you have noted, Skype is a Business and the goal is to make profits.
I have meantime found http://www.talkshoe.com which I have tried and found VERY good. It operates more or less the same as Skypecasts, with a HOST who can MUTE participants if necessary. This is a great feature!
Those of us who enjoyed the SkypeCasts will find other places to get together. One somewhat unique group, calling themselves the Skype Assholes, have launched their own Cast from a website http://www.skypeassholes.com and it may suit some of you, but definitely NOT ALL!! They enjoy robust debate and a bit of indelicate language. (At least they have done something about the CASTHOLE left by Skype at such short notice.)
Good Luck to all Skype friends out there…we will find our way back home again with or without the people who own Skype!
Slainte!
i like how these people are saying skype shot themselves in the foot but they have 13 million users online right now, millions more than last year when skypecasts was still alive.
Reopen them! Oh, please
Make a vote or something and you will see how many people miss Skypecasts so dearly.
I regret to hear this. I would of thought that you could be working in parallel on a upgraded product. Why stop the service ?
I can fore see that it could be a mistake as the many users not being fullfilled will move to another medium eg OOVOO.
Maybe you need to have a time frame so it can help at least retain your customers.
Yes its had it ups and downs but together with myself and many fellow skypers we have found it a very useful service.
What will we do to continue ? the inevitable is that we will find another option and could this jepordise skypes business ?
One thing crept in to my mind it wouldnt be so that you can utilise your band width to meet your expanding telephone users. As they pay but have you considered those of use who use both services?
I just hope you are making the right decision skype !
I have been with you for more than 2 years and regular user.
How are some of the other users going to be effected ?
NZed….thinking of my alternatives.
amadeusnz | Wednesday, Aug 27
another question …why at such short notice ?
You could of given more time.
Will there still be conference calls available ?
Looking forward to your reply Peter
NZed
amadeusnz | Wednesday, Aug 27
I totally agree with NZed, atlernatives are available, eg. OOVOO, and I think Skype will loose many of their customers. There is a way of upgrading Skypecasts without discontinuing the service. There is a way of discontinuing service to those that are misusing the service.
I think this is a huge mistake on Skype’s part.
Thunder
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Noticing your reticience to answer any valid and thought out questions – it is very doubtful that I will continue to buy skype credits under a seperate user named account and support Skype again
Hello fellow Skype friends,
Just an FYI that may interest some of you. My company is currently developing a Skype conference service that will have nearly all the features that Skypecasting offered. We’ve been in development for about 9 months and our proof of concept servers have been running beta rooms for about 5 months very successfully.
As I speak, there are about 45 users in our 5 beta channels. It’s been very popular with our beta groups.
I cannot go into too much detail until the commercial launch, but if you’d like to get in touch with me you can contact me via skype username: aaronbsmith or email me at aaron aaronsmith net.
We are also looking for two or three very talented C# developers who may have interest in joining us in development.
Don’t fret friends, I hope to have a similar SkypeCast-like service soon.
If any skypecasters are out there who did a show and is looking for a new home for it, check out http://talkradiox.com. TalkRadioX, is more like a traditional radio station; one that is heard not only online but also on a few terrestrial stations as well.
Anyone interested should head over to TalkRadioX.com and check it out. Or send me an email at dan@talkradiox.com.
Thanks.
i ioved this service too much , but is there an expected time for its back
please i want know if this service will be canceled forever or there is a specific time then it will be re-opend
best wishes