Skype Announces Big Makeover Focused on Messaging and Social Sharing, But Will That Drive Its Popularity?

Skype on Thursday became the latest app in the growing list of services that are copying features straight from Snapchat. Microsoft-owned service announced a major redesign of its mobile app, which now comes with a feature called "Highlights" that lets users share photos and videos that will only be temporarily visible to their friends. The feature, as you can imagine, carries a strong resemblance to Snapchat's "Stories," a format that has been growing in popularity among young audiences. All of Facebook's consumer-focused services, including Instagram and WhatsApp, also offer a similar feature in their apps. What will be interesting to see in the coming weeks is whether the redesign and the new feature will give Skype a boost among users. Analysts are skeptical. Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research offers a reality-check: Skype is one of those odd products -- a fairly sizable communications property owned by a major tech company, and yet one which doesn't make much money, isn't growing much, and hasn't really been focused on either messaging or social communication. [...] The new design puts social sharing and messaging much more prominently in the app, but that's no guarantee that people will actually use those features more or even see Skype as a natural place to do that kind of sharing.