'We knew we had to modernize the experience,' Amritansh Raghav, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Skype, told me in a - what else? - Skype call earlier this week. Google Meet and Duo add group video calls to Nest Hub Max.10 Free Zoom Alternative Apps for Video Chats.

It's like Facebook meets Snap/Instagram Stories, but only for your inner circle.

When you swipe left, you'll get a feed of photos and videos from your contacts. If you swipe from the right, you'll now get a camera for taking pictures that you can send to friends just like in Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. When setting up your account, for example, you're asked to choose colors that represent who you are. There are other changes designed to give it a new feel, too. Those lines also undulate when people are typing a reply, much like when you get an empty speech bubble, moving dots or a notification someone is typing in other chat apps. Some of them will have squiggly neon lines under their names and profile photos. When you start Skype, you'll see a list of the people you most recently chatted with. The app is free, but Microsoft makes money by charging for calls to normal phone numbers and when businesses use it for their conference calls and other communications.

That puts it behind WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and the Chinese chat apps QQ Mobile and WeChat. Skype is the fifth most popular app in the category, according to data compiled by Statista, with 200 million people using it to power 3 billion minutes of calls every day. The changes come as Microsoft tries to keep up with its rivals in the online chat space. Instead, Skype now sports a user interface that's an amalgamation of today's most popular chatting apps - think Snapchat and Instagram - and that delivers a look filled with neon colors, squiggly lines and animations that feel kind of techno-meets-'80s-revival. Starting Thursday, the 13-year-old video conferencing and chat software, which was bought by Microsoft six years ago, is getting a radically new look that ditches the bubbly buttons that were so in two decades ago. Skype is getting a makeover, though it's hard to tell whether it's cool or just trying to look cool.

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