Yesterday marked the end of an era.

Skype — the service that introduced millions to video calling — officially went dark after 22 years.

It was one of the first such services I ever used back in the day, and I used it hundreds of times.

Remember when “Skyping” was the verb for video calling?

Before we “Zoomed,” we Skyped.

The blue-and-white interface. That iconic ringtone that triggered both excitement and anxiety.

The pathetically awkward “can you hear me?” dance.

Skype pioneered what we now take for granted: free voice and video calls over the internet. Founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a team of Estonian developers, it grew to 100 million users within just two years — revolutionary for its time.

But Skype’s story became an education in how NOT to handle a market-leading product.

First, eBay scooped it up for $2.6 billion in 2005, hoping to… actually, nobody really understood why. Four years later, they offloaded most of it at a loss.

Then Microsoft stepped in with an $8.5 billion acquisition in 2011, seeing Skype as their gateway to communications dominance. Instead, they smothered what made Skype special—simplicity and reliability—with needless feature creep and clunky redesigns.

Meanwhile, Zoom entered the scene in 2013, built by ex-WebEx engineer Eric Yuan. While Skype fumbled with identity crises and redesigns, Zoom focused obsessively on one thing:

Making video calls that actually worked.

The numbers tell the stark story. By 2021, Zoom held 48.7% of the video conferencing market.

Skype? A mere 6.6%, down from 32.4% just a year earlier!

But Skype’s true killer came from within.

Microsoft launched Teams in 2016, effectively cannibalizing their own product. They poured resources into Teams while Skype languished, creating competition from their own house.

Product Payoff: Compare this to WhatsApp, which Meta acquired for $19 billion in 2014. Unlike Microsoft with Skype, Meta recognized WhatsApp’s core value proposition — simple, reliable messaging — and largely preserved it.

And, guess what? WhatsApp grew from 450 million to over 2 billion users under Meta’s ownership, while maintaining its essential identity and purpose.

Action for today: Examine your product portfolio. Are there areas where you’re cannibalizing yourself? When you acquire or develop multiple solutions in the same space, you need crystal-clear differentiation and purpose for each. Otherwise, you’re just fragmenting resources and confusing your customers.

Are you protecting what makes your flagship products special?

Tap that reply arrow and tell me about a time you successfully balanced innovation with preserving your product’s core identity.

Or reach out to my team of product marketing strategists at Graphos Product.