hello

i wanted to comment on my view of skype casts, i think it a good idea that they are shutting down for a while this will give time for skype to better manage and utillise skypecasts for the better enjoyment of its users as well give time to misusers a way of re-thinking thier goals on skype, i thank you for reaching this point. i hope you can live up to your claim.

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.

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

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

i am sorry to hear this. It is bad news. I enjoyed skypecasts very much. i met good people and learnt a lot from them. skypecasts made the world a smaller place and closed the gaps of communications that exist between cultures, religions and countries.

i hope you reconsider and re activate this service.

Wow! I cant believe it... I love skypecasts! i host regularly and like Nzed said can we still do conference calls?? I am really sad to see the casts go.. me and my huge skype family meet in them everyday! (cry)

Yes, I wish you'd rethink this. Skypecasts aren't great, but would you please keep it working until you come out with your new and improved alternative?

This is really unfortunate and terribly sad, and I ask you to reconsider. It is really the only forum where people from all over the world can speak directly with each other as though they're all living together. This is a place where people made friends and this decision will effectively put a stop to all those friendships. Whatever the business decision, the system should be kept up somehow to allow the groups of people to continue to gather as you provide options to transfer somewhere somehow else.

Again, please, please reconsider.

One more thing, you claim you're doing this for the betterment of the Skype community. The ironic thing is that this is the Skype community. Without Skypecasts we're all alone and there simply is nothing holding us together in anything resembling a community. Please fix whatever it is that needs to be fixed, but don't kill something unique and incredible and amazing.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME. IVE BEEN USEING SKYPE FOR 5 YEARS. 2 IN A HALF OF THAT RUNNING CASTS. IVE HAD MY PROFILE COPIED ...MY CASTS HAVE BEEN DISRUPTED BUT WITH ALL OF THAT I ENJOY THIS PROGRAM. IVE MET THE MOST WONDERFUL PEOPLE HERE AND HAVE GOTTEN TO MEET THEM IN REAL LIFE FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD TOO. I WILL PETITION ALL OF MY CASTERS TO SWITCH TO ANOTHER PROGRAM AND PULL MY FUNDS OUT OF SKYPE ALSO. TOO ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHOM HAVE CAUSED THIS TO HAPPEN ...YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, THANKS ALLOT FOR A PROGRAM TO STOP A WELL USED AVENUE TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WORLD SOUNDS MORE LIKE A CORPRATE TAKEOVER TO DESTROY COMMUNICATION ESPECIALLY WITH ALL THE WORLD ISSUES THAT ARE HAPPENING ITS NICE TO KNOW THAT WHEN OUR MEDIA RUN NEWS COMPLICATES ACTUAL ISSUES ITS NICE TO KNOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH EACHOTHER WITHOUT ALL THAT STRESS. BAD IDEA SKYPE REALLY A SHAME TO SEE YOU BUCKLE UNDER THE PRESSURES OF CORPORATE BS. YOUR ONCE LOYAL USER VITAMIN D

Amen Dina.

Thanks for the memories........Good-bye Skype (Casts) Heeelllllooooo OOvOO et al!

Well, I have to say that I'm really disappointed at Skype's decision to retire casts. I have spent many a nights giggling and singing on skype. But with this new announcement, I will have to seek an alternative chat medium and I'm sure many others will be doing the same. It's really a shame that it had to come to this due to a select few misusers. I, for one, will not be purchasing any more skype credits and I hope the rest of it's users will do the same until skype realizes that they must bring back casts. I hope skype feels the tremendous impact of their decision and comes up with a more exceptable alternative before they lose all their users.

**Giggles**

I am truly stunned and surprised by the decision by skype to remove the skypecast service for, lets face it, the foreseeable future.

This sadly is a purely business decision by skype to aim their services more at business users and high volume/overseas phone users.

I cannot speak for them but I can speak for the skype community....

This SUCKS! big time. Skypecasts although having many flaws are a brilliant medium for bringing people together from all over the world. Without sounding like a wet sponge, skypecasts do alot for world relations in the sense that it is able to bring together people from different races, religions, background and circumstances.

On this stage people can discuss world issues, exchange ideas and become more informed with regards to situations and experiences from all over the world.

It's these sort of mediums that, as cheesy as it sounds - do make a difference in changing peoples' views on the world, and the people that live in it. I have enjoyed using the skype service, but the main reason has been because of the casts. I have met some amazing people, made some great friendships, listened and been educated to other views, opinions and even though I may have disagreed with them I still valued the different points of view.

Non pompus like.... I have had great times on skype! I have a skype family whom I love dearly, the pub, the quiz nights even sexy chat along with the many brilliant regular hosted and one-off casts, have made skype a second to non online community...family! I have used skype more than any other software I have currently on my system lol. Skype for me will lose alot of its appeal. I am lucky enough to have gathered a great list of contacts but newer users won't have this backup without the casts. And won't have seen skype at its best.

and as for this comment:

i wanted to comment on my view of skype casts, i think it a good idea that they are shutting down for a while this will give time for skype to better manage and utillise skypecasts for the better enjoyment of its users as well give time to misusers a way of re-thinking thier goals on skype, i thank you for reaching this point. i hope you can live up to your claim.

infintive_space My status | Wednesday, Aug 27

My dear sir/madam......JOG ON! - and please pass my regards onto skype, as it seems to me you are more than friends

Rosalyn A. Scanlon....signing (peed)off!
http://www.xkype-tails.eu/xkype-lives/

http://www.xkype-tails.eu

There are several ways to communicate on the internet. Skype's real claim to fame was the skypecasts. Without them...skype will be just like the rest. But with an interface that lacks what others have. This is the death of skype. You that have control of the decisions should definately think twice before you kill the golden goose. Granted there are problems with skypecasts..but they also serve a tremendous value and you will have hundreds of thousands of users that will now turn their back on skype for this lack of understanding of the real skype community. Skype casts are how people meet each other, and wihtout that you are cutting of your nose to spite your face. This is a stupid move..one that you should definately think twice before going forward

Totally bogus. Skypecasts are hella cool, why take them away?

I'm also wondering if we can still have conference calls and such. Hopefully it won't be too long before the new casts. Closing skypecasts two days before my birthday, terrible birthday present, Skype, terrible, terrible present.

infinite space you are probably the reason skype is discontinueing casts . you wine too much.

Skypecast lost it's functionality.We ended up with three sets of people,,shills,,,fence sitters,,,,and a few researchers that tried to get the truth out.After a few months, the turn over of these groups became stale.Good riddance skypecast.

I'm sad and pleased that skypecast are going to change in the future. Maybe it will give some of the trolls using skypecasts to bother good people something to think about. Even though their few at hand their still a nuisance.I'm sad that I won't be able to host skypecasts anymore, because theres an awful lot of people out here on skype that use the casts to brighten their days and evenings, They've become almost total dependent on skypecasts. But if this is what it takes to make a better skype experience then so be it....Goodbye Skypecast you'll be missed dearly. And hopefully we will still have conference calling.

Thanks for the announcement.
I hope you really think quickly of what to do in order to replace skypecasts.

I highly value skypecasts with all their bugs and warts. Yes there are problems, but so often I have made connections with people that I would not otherwise meet.

So thank you for what you provided. I hope very much that you fill the void. I know other pc to pc voice chat services will look at this as an opportunity to fill or replace what skype produced.

Replace? The plug is pulled, like the number 7 tower.Skypecast has fallen into it's own basement.The only chance of it's return is a sale to Google.Skypecast was barely allowed and monitored to high heaven.It will not be coming back in the present ownership situation and I think Google doesn't even want it.They know what it could be and they have enough pressure on them as it is.

QUEEN OF NORWAY BIDS FAREWELL TO THE SKYPECASTS!
This is really sad. You will loose a lot of users, that's for sure I've been using the Skypecasts running my online talkshow 'Queen of Norway LIVE'. I've had thousands of people join my casts over the last year and a half, and I've made friends with people from all around the world. And now you're closing it all down??!!! Not good.
To my listeners: If you still want to stay in touch with my show, log in to queenofnorway.ning.com, or add me on facebook (search for 'Queen ON'), or add me on my MySpace (myspace.com/queenofnorway4u2). My website www.queenofnorwaylive.com will also be up and running soon. We'll find other ways to communicate, until then: STAY STRONG, BE NICE, DON'T DO ANYTHING THAT I WOULDN'T DO - AND WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF DOING THAT ANYWAYS - FEEL FREE TO SHARE ALL THE DETAILS WITH ME ON MY SHOW!

Love,
Queen of Norway LIVE

I'm so sad! I've met such nice people on skype, and I love them to death! And now your taking away the one thing that connects us all on skype :[
If your going to upgrade it...
Do it quickly... So I can meet more awesome people and party with them every night on skype. Skypecasts are too fun to be taken away~ They give the insomniacs and people who don't like to sleep something to do~
Please rethink getting rid of skypecasts~
And if you take them away, be sure to bring them back all new and improved so we don't have to get mad at our glitchy voices and dropping out~
Thankk youuu =)

°•* Mεlтεd Gяαcιε

So the abusers win? How very weak your response is, I'm sure they're very happy.

I am voicing my opinion on behalf of the skype community, when I say that this is utterly dispicable and downright disgusting.

If I could just lift a segment from previously mentioned article.

"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."

NOT QUITE MEASURING UP TO OUR HIGH STANDARDS AND EXPECTATIONS?

Skype has high standards? Well roger me sideways. I was positively certain you guys had an 'Open Door' policy for assholes. As for the performance of said feature, that's your own problem. You created it. You FAILED to provide a service which is consistant. And when I say consistant, you guys KNOW what I'm getting at. Ever been in a skypecast and it boots you out, and then.. wait.. I can't get back in? And oopsadaisies.. I can't make another cast for another what.. 3 hours? Sad to say that's happened to a large amount of us. And that 'little' problem when you've set up your room, and .. hmm.. where's the room? All I can see is the number and a white box. Hmm. Or you've got the whole three people up at a time shabang. You know.. People cutting out all over the place. Pft. Definately not terracotta.

Killing the community aspect of skype by removing the skypecasts. Nice going skype. What on earth are you going to do next? I think it's time to flash up your website again, cause you ain't done that in a few weeks. Perhaps you could like.. focus on improving call quality.. Wait.. like haven't you been doing that for what.. 4 years? Maan. It must be hard for you guys.. Shall I rub your back? I empathise, I really do.. PFFTTTT!!!

If you remove the skypecasts, there is no community. I've been using Skype for a number of years now, but I didn't start using skypecasts until earlier on this year. Within a couple of months my contact list had rose from 6 to 146. And I'm pretty picky when it comes to adding people. Heck, I'm picky about my shoes and they only go on my feet.

Sure, Skype is littered with unadulterated filth, but then you actually meet some genuine people. If there hadn't been skypecasts, I wouldn't have met some of the most amazing people. I ain't naming any names, but you guys know exactly who you are. Not trying to be secret or anything. I just don't want to boost your already highly inflated egos

I mean, I've met a few from just randomly searching for people, when I've been in desperate need of attention, but nothing beats meeting someone in a group situation.

Skype is like a highschool. You've got your little clics of people. Some that act like children, some that actually act like adults. Some downright bitchy clans, and then lovely little close knits of chums. This is like seperating every student off from each other in their own private classroom. The student body needs to rise up against our harsh dictator and put our collective foot down.

HAHAHA Okay, bad analogy. But on a more serious note, Skype is sending us all back our rooms to think about what we've done. The harsh reality is, when we come down to breakfast in the morning, we're sitting at the table alone.

Rant over. Job done.

right on Jade....We need to tell everyone that is using skype to ask for a refund of any credits that they have with skype. We need to join a group to get the word out. The queen.of.norway is starting a group to save skypecasts now, everyone should join.

I started using Skpe in April as a way to keep in touch with my family while I was overseas. It kept me sane and not so lonely. I wondered into casts here and there and met some of the most amazing people. Sure, some casts were downright filthy and there were creepy guys out there at times, but if I had to list some of the people that I met who touche me in a nice way, my list would contain the following:

-The teenager with cancer who wanted to just talk and be friendly
-The battered woman who when she was not being beat up by her parnter would take solice in the small community of people who supported her.
-The faceless voice who gave me sage advice on business
-The man who showered me with MP3s and good conversation
-Quiz night starting Friday nights and going clear into Saturday afternoons
-Watching a movie online with my friends clear on the other side of the planet
-Someone to pour my broken heart out on to when it was so far from home
-Someone who mentored me in business and helped me to get ahead
-The creepy white T shirt guy who insisted females "talk" to him. Ok that one wasn't too great but entertaining nonethless
-The cats who walked across his keyboards
-A really great DJ who kept me entertained while I cleaned my house from 5 thousand miles away
-A loving,caring and sharing cast where you just came to sit a spell and talk shop about most anything as long as you were respectful.

The list goes on but these are the ones I remember. To take away such a medium is really sad. With the exception of some of the filthies people I have ever met in my life, some of the best people I know are in this community and this is how we have kept in touch and kept our friendships going .. through thick and thin and yes have met a face or two in person.

It's your choice to take away this function albeit a bad one.

User feedback...or some people whining ??.. I have been a SKYPEcast user for over six months and have found many wonderful people with a many wonderful ideas and different points of view. I will never forget the morning after Russa invaded Georga when I was able to talk to a Russian, a Georgian and many more concerned people all in the same cast. I don't think that You have any idea what You have here, even with it's problems, I have never seen a more international discussion agenda in My life..... Please don't pull the plug.Cea Ya

You mother fuckers.

Congratulations Yoora, you and Snake and Falcon managed to hack this medium out of existence.

You morons, did you think they'd leave you alone to launch exploits and issue threats forever?

Karmic load, dude.

what can i say> i remember the great days of the casts and ...well the realy crappy ones but all in all it was FUN.
Oh nooooo what are we going to do now???
&%*& happens and you gotta live with it!!!

JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP TO SAVE THE SKYPECASTS!
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29090761820

Love,
Q

I found out about skype through a friend. I just want to say that skype is awsome and it shouldn't be shut down. I don't know if it is for busniess or legal reasons, but shouldn't there have been more notice? Can't this be sorted out? Thanks for all the great casts...I'll miss them...

PEACE, Newbreed

Wow. Unexpected. A little part of me hopes this is a mean joke.

I am sad now! Meh. It was so wonderful to meet and chat to so many people. I will be very sad with its closure.

Also, to those whole suddenly feel "Conferences" will be gone. I highly doubt that and have no idea why people are thinking such a thing They only mentioned "Skypecasts" not conferences. So no worries!I hope that helps lessen some worries. Conferences have been around for a long time. Nothing is wrong with it so they have no reason to remove it. There IS something wrong with Skypecast though. Just needs improvements, thus the removal.

I will miss you Skypecast. *waves sadly*

AND TO ALL OF YOU JERKS THAT KICKED ME OUT OF CASTS JUST BECAUSE OF MY VOICE SOUNDING YOUNG (I am 19) WELL... .. YOU'RE MEAN. =( Also, to all the skypecasts racists (and there were A LOT): STFU..!
HMPH!

:]

Its now the 27th of August and you have decided to pull the plug on skypecasts. Well.... havent you just pooed in your own pants. Not only are you going to lose your loyal customers but they also wont come back when you decide to come back online. Its going to be a one fingered salute for you guys. Its a pity too, because I did get to meet some awesome people and not so nice ones. Well, see ya later skypecasts. Better still, how about you just shut down completely and we can forget about you and go somewhere else.

Rest in Peace Skypecasts

Ich hatt' einen Kameraden

Ich hatt' einen Kameraden,
Einen bessern findst du nit.
Die Trommel schlug zum Streite,
Er ging an meiner Seite
In gleichem Schritt und Tritt.
Eine Kugel kam geflogen,
Gilt's mir oder gilt es dir?
Ihn hat es weggerissen,
Er liegt mir vor den Füßen,
Als wär's ein Stück von mir.
Will mir die Hand noch reichen,
Derweil ich eben lad.
Kann dir die Hand nicht geben,
Bleib du im ew'gen Leben
Mein guter Kamerad!

I had a comrade,
you won't find a better one.
The drum was rolling for battle,
he marched at my side
in the same stride.

A bullet flew towards us
is it meant for me or meant for you?
It tore him away,
he lies beneath my feet
like a piece of myself.

I had a comrade
He wants to give me his hand,
while I reload.
"I can't give you my hand,
rest in eternal life
my good comrade!"

Yo tenía un camarada,
nunca lo hallaré mejor,
que en la gloriosa jornada,
iba firme en la pisada,
|: al redoble del tambor.

"Una bala, compañero.
¿Para quién de los dos es?"
Era el diálogo postrero,
y bajo el plomo certero,
|: cayó tendido a mis pies.

Hace un esfuerzo y, en vano,
quiere mi mano estrechar.
"Duerme en paz, querido hermano.
La Patria quiere mi mano
|: para volver a atacar."

You know this is worst Idea that skype had, to kill skype cast are want made by the cast...If skype closes the door on cast. This is going to lose of world talk. I wish Skype would fix the cast and reopen for bussness.

I have been a skype unlimited user for 3 years now. This really sucks that you would end skypecasts. IF YOUR HAVING PROBLEMS WITH SKYPECASTS FIX THEM GETTING RID OF SKYPECASTS IS NOT A SOLUTION ITS GIVING UP AND TAKING AWAY FROM YOUR SERVICES AND I DONT LIKE IT.

This is the most tragic news I've heard in a long time. Thank you skypecasts for having a major positive impact on my life.

I don't think the people of Skype understand what a blunder this is. There is going to be a blacklash of angry Skype users that well versed in spreading the news about alternatives to Skype. You have taken what could have be the start of a whole new revolution in peoples abilities to communicate and killed it in it's enfant stage. This is very short sighted, and Skype will wither and die because of it. Some new program will emerge and Skype will be another "could have been great" footnote in history. Ecourage everyone you know to entice Skpye to change...and if they don't encourage them demand any credits Skype holds and move on to another program. Lets join together and fight this or join together and create another Skype like realm.

I am truly sorry to see the end of skypecasts , even temporarily. I am aware of the abuses by people, but for us who made new friends , enjoyed the company of people from different cultures and generally escaped otherwise unedifying nights this was a true godsend.... it's too bad that we're being punished because of immature idiots.....be proud you jackasses..... I truly despise you people....

noo!!!! dont do that to us WE really enjoy skypecast ..im so sad !!!! this is a really bad news... to all the people....... Thanks for all the great casts...I'll miss them... ES MUY TRISTE VER A LOS SKYPECAST DESAPARECER !!!!

Join the boycott skype movement. No Skyecasts no skype. Without this feature skype is pure garbage. What pure disrespect for their user base. The website will be up shortly boycotskypemovetopaltalk will be up shortly. This is clearly about shutting down free discussion. I will be permanently uninstalling skype on all my machines and phone August 31. I will be requesting a refund of all skype funds. I will be encouraging all my skype friends to do the same. Move to paltalk, it is still free! We need to work on a non server based peer to peer client that supports this. oovoo and gizmo5 do not support the ability to find chat rooms. The powers that be do not want you discussing issues openly give what is coming. Skype will not be changing their decision it is not theirs.

This is the stupidest decision you all have ever made.

This will spell your death -- millions and millions of users will flock to better alternatives, once skypecasting[the only reason many many people use skype] has gone!

I and several others have been using Skypecasts in order to showcase exactly how uninformed and violent Islamic Extremists are. Exactly WHO they are, demonstrated not by MSNBC or CNN, but by the extremists themselves, for all the world to "see" and listen to.

The world is a safer place as a result of these efforts by freedom-loving Americans and their retarded detractors that use violance as a substitute for tolerance. Ending Skypecasts makes the world a more dangerous place, as it allows insulated Americans to fantasize that perhaps "these people" aren't so bad after all, and somehow are deserving of consideration and respect, instead of incarceration and death.

Further, I do not appreciate the whole corporate "trying to maintain high standards" routine. Skypecasts were flawed, free and loved (and hated) by those that use them. It's not as if Skype were expending any resources into maintaining or improving Skypecasts. Please. It's been exactly the same for over a year, in terms of quality. Yet people still use it, so what's the harm?

No matter. There's a need for this type of service, and it's just a matter of time before someone else provides it, and at a higher level of quality. I'm not worried.

The loss of skypecasts is a tragedy. It represents an evolving medium/forum of individuals who share opinions on many dimensions of life. I would like ask the owners, if its commercial charge us the appropriate fees. If you seek to regulate us then don't, just let it evolve and its robust design will make it better then you ever envisaged. You have made a mistake in your decision to remove a free speech forum.

Why is this announcement not on the front page of the skypecasts?

https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/home

It is only four days till the plug is pulled, and the only people who are going to know about this are the ones who get the link to this page sent to them.

Starting September 1st, there is going to be a crush of people asking, "What's happening with skypecasts?" Even then, is there still going to be nothing on the skypecast page about what's going on? That would be par for the course.

The ineptness and incompetence of the skypecast management continues to amaze me.

Oh, and skypecasts should be much easier to monetize than individual skype calls. Skypecasts do have a text description ideal for data-mining and serving up related ads -- if the skype client were only maintained and had such an ad box present.

Sad sad sad. No one from skype seems to care about the community of skypecasters.

I really hate to sound like Dutch Wagenback of The Shield but YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME?!? Your words, Peter, consists of the most useless shower of corporate business cretin weasel words I've had the damned misfortune to parse in such a long time that it makes me wonder whether or not Kenneth Lay manufactured and installed your computer chair because HOT DAMN if you're not spinnning both ways to save your own ass, Skype's ass, and the monkey asses of eBay's upper brass -- all in a sad contrivance of the word "Vision"; a vision that apparently means having to hammer the final nail in the proverbial coffin of the 338 million strong Skype community via killing SkypeCast in order to *SAVE* that community that stuck around this long *BECAUSE* of Skypecasts ...

Of course, what this all boils down to is the business cretin buzzword of "Vision" and -- Speaking of Skype's "vision", let's take a little stroll through recent Skype history, starting with last June/July of 2007 to find out exactly what that "vision" entails just to make sure that it all makes it into the final Director's cut in a future episode of VH-1's "Behind The Bullshit" devoted to Skype and eBay unmitigated failures (I'm being facetious here -- no way in hell could Skype and eBay ever get lucky enough for Sumner Redstone to waste the 60 minutes of airtime) ...

In June/July 2007, I and 4 other people tried to emulate the fun and hilarity of the Skypecast community without all the damned highschool clique drama that often erupted between the friends/family/acquaintences and thus dividing that same SkypeCast community (shades of highschool, I know) in a podcast entitled "A Corrupted Kids Show". By going back and listening to shows 001 thru about Show 007 or so, the sound quality of the show is in direct purportion to the sound quality of SkypeCasts during that time.

Be careful listening to show 001, however -- it's a trainwreck ... and that may hit too close to home considering that Skype and Skypecasts became trainwrecks shortly afterward in July 2007 when suddenly, and for no damned reason whatsoever other than the forementioned "vision" you talked about, Peter, the developers of Skype deployed new code and SIPS technology to SkypeCasts which greatly increased the *POTENTIAL* sound quality to that of a conference call ........... that is if we could ever manage to cure ourselves of the migraine headache caused by its penchant for ear-splitting blasts of static, the telltale 7-12 second drop, or its infernal "Internal Error #5" kabuki dance.

Translation: YOUR SORRY DEVELOPERS BROKE SKYPECASTS THEN AND THEY REMAINED *BROKE* FOR *MONTHS*!!

My involvement with "A Corrupted Kids Show" ceased as of November 2007 with show 022 and SkypeCasts were *STILL* broken at the time with the same problems, and it was those issues with SkypeCasts and echo problems with conference calls which forced us on "A Corrupted Kids Show" to abandon Skype and make a mad, mad, mad, mad dash to OOVOO around Show 010 or so. In other words, roughly half to 2/3rd of the original 22 episodes of "A Corrupted Kids Show" was done with ooVoo simply because your developers implemented Ebay's "vision", which is nothing more than the "The Reverse Midas Effect": EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH TURNS TO SHIT INSTEAD OF GOLD!

All of which leads me to suspect that the project lead *DID* voice how repugnantly embarassing and ridiculous this code was and possible quit or got fired for not sharing Skype/eBay's "vision" *OR* it simply became or *WAS* Skype/eBay's "vision" all along when the implementation of this code revealed just how fugly it was in action. This is simply where my bullshit detector goes off for I find it damned near impossible that a crew of software developers (let along a project lead) would deploy code and then *ALLOW* it to completely pull an end-run around one aspect of a product for *MONTHS* even if it was Beta without having a contigency plan that consists of ... *SURPRIZE!* .... *ROLLING BACK TO THE OLD WORKING CODE!!* This isn't brain surgery here - even WindowsXP has a host of rollback and restore options for *THAT* very reason.

I gotta call them as I see 'em: Apparently, since SkypeCasts are still somewhat broken thanks to this sorry development code implemented last July/June, the shareholders of eBay simply do not want to sink a single drop of money required to address the issues such as hire competent developers while firing the dead weight, rollback to the old pre-SIPS code while also commissioning the developers to implement security issues and hacks up to this point into that old code, or anything that would save Skypecasts and therefore preserve what's left of Skype's community (out of 338 Million registered users, only 8 Million of them are online as I write this).

Preposterous ...

While the Skypecast community have experianced death, high gas prices, rising health costs, joblessness, and foreclosure, could you enlighten us Peter on what the *TRUE* "vision" of eBay/Skype and its shareholders consists of because as far as I see it, it consists of nothing but the continued bourgeious entitlement to more tax cuts, more SUVs, more private schools, more multi-million dollar McMansions, and illegal wage-slave Mexican maids/nannies/gardeners.

@mobe3000: Before you register the domain boycotskypemovetopaltalk.com, you might want to check the spelling of "boycott".

We do need a central website or two or three . . . to guide the migration from skype to alternatives. I guess skypecastalternatives.com would be a good gateway. It's available! Hmm. Got it.

skypecastalternatives.com

I'll try and set up a temporary welcome page soon. Oovoo, PALtalk, Gizmo, . . we'll find the alternatives as a community and move en masse

Send e-mail to shonangreg [at] gmail [dot] com if you want to have a link added. I'm not trying to make money off this, so I'm willing to list other sites.

Greg

How can you do this?
I like the feature.
I understand that it might need some improvements and changes, but you really should do this in without shutting the old system down. Don't do that until the new system is ready.
Please reconsider.

Here is my 2 cents. Some of it you won't like and some you will.

Firstly, I don't know about the rest of you but I haven't payed a cent to participate in skypecasts. Therein lies the issue. Skype can pull this service at any time and for any reason. There is no argument.

That is not to say I agree with the decision.

The reasons are:
1. The whole thing stinks of something bigger. I'm not going to get into the whole free speech thing or business model thing, but..... honestly, give me some credit for having neurons. 6 days notice? Please..

2. Attention SKYPE MANAGEMENT:
Whether you like it or not, you have, via your actions (being continuing 'inferior' skypecasts) assumed a responsibility, albeit moral only, to the skype community.
I think this fact is sad in some ways, but a large number of people RELY on this medium for a number of reasons. The most serious reasons involve life itself. I wish I was kidding

Lastly, (And this is the part readers will not like), Please consider this in context. It sucks but honestly, did you think cool free stuff lasts forever?)

Cheers
Spida

Nothing much I can say that hasn't been said. I've just got to say it really sounds like a "Bad call". Skype is too big a part of my life to be able to cast it off, in many ways I need the services offered however I can't continue recommending it to others if features such as Skypecasts are removed.

This may be falling on deaf ears as this is happening way to fast and the reasoning quite vague for this to just be made on a whim. I'm guessing something bad has happened and Skype needs to forgo the service now. I'm going to miss this service though, I hope it is replaced in a reasonable amount of time as this should be up there on the list of Skype's priorities.

Goodnight Skypecasts, your going to be missed.

--John, aka: Blackthorn23

How sad!True,there were things to complain about casts but we learned to cope with them by time,and discovered that is worth to forgive them,as the biig door of the world has opened free for everybody ..I am glad and grateful i was here,i opened the door and sometimes i found wonderfull and amaising people.I want to believe that i become a better person as i had learned many things ,sometimes only through listening.. many times i had met people who nicely touched my heart..i've made precious friends!
Please!Do not stop now!Have a quick come back as soon as possible PLEASE GO ON!
happy

"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."

Does this mean Skype will be going open source soon?

John Kennedy
Global Voices Online
Global Voices Advocacy

Goodnight SkypeCasts by Peter Parkes.

Well, after reading Peter's announcement, it was a surprise to me, to learn of the decision to shut down SkypeCasts. It was mentioned in one of the daily English Learning Casts I was visiting online just now.

While I do agree with Peter's comments.....
[Skypecasts is not quite measuring up to our high standards and expectations for connecting and delighting our users] .....
I personally feel that the number of delighted users, who are setting an acceptable high standard and expectation, should not be penalized by Skype removing the SkypeCast service.

I am a part of a global "English Online Community" group, who are currently setting up SkypeCast free community services for our 700+ Skype users, who are expressing interest in using SkypeCast events to develop their English skills.

It certainly does not please me to see poor quality SkypeCast events related to obscene language and images in public view.

Maybe, high quality measures need to be put into place to improve the expectations of SkypeCasts?

What measures could be introduced to improve the situation to allow SkypeCasts to continue and develop into what Skype expects?

I suggest to first, introduce a better control over the poor quality. Maybe only allow hosts who have an accredited and/or approved Skype Account, where the Host has provided Skype with positive Skype user identification (ID) and/or also to be a credit account user of Skype (paying Skype customer)?

This idea I have suggested, is aimed to have the Host a known Skype user and not some unknown Skype Spam User who may be more likely to fall short of Skype's expectations?

Whatever ideas come out of all this, we do need SkypeCasts to develop higher standards, I totally agree with Peter on that subject.

I love using SkypeCast, I certainly hope Skype reconsiders dropping the service for now and focuses on a solution rather than closure.

Regards,

Steve (New Zealand)

So what are skypes expectation and who are the great moral decison makers ? This sounds strangely orwellian. "Ministry of Truth" is finally here.

It was fun while it lasted, catch y'all on the flip side

Hi all,

as a guy who likes to cast, I have to say it looks to my like a conspiracy. Why shutting the popular Skypecasts down, and leaving Skype as another stupid non sense messenger. We have thousands of it, and skype it staying now in one line with MSN or Yahoo messenger. The advantage is wasted by the decision of skype, destroyed on pupose for no reason. SO we all know other plattforms are available right now, others will be build up by competitors. So lets say good bye skype, was a nice time......but the fish in this case stinks from the head, what means from the managment which made this decision.

The judgement of the users will be clear as I think.

Bye Bye Skype, I wIll uninstall you at the 1st of September !!!

Skypecasts has been the only true medium of free speech. this is the place where anyone can say anything, good or bad. It reflects the state of the world and gives us a medium to really know what is going on. It is the medium of the free people in the world. What you did is mute all of us. this is a bad move. To be honest, i knew that the politians will some day shut this down.

If freedom is really what you preach, then reconsider.

Shame on skype for buckling down. Shame on you.

This sounds like a good move! Hopefully now you'll concentrate on getting the Linux client up to scratch and making a native 64 bit version!

We have been reading the Bible with our friends all over the world through "Skypecasts" and not happy about this news.

We are looking for alternative service for us to keep reading the Bible together and please let me know if you know any.

Thank you,

Andrew
http://www.iBible.com

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I love skypecast!!! I love to enter a room with people of all the parts of the world and talk with them about random topics, make jokes with them, get fun or just practise english.

If it is not so popular as you expected: why it's usage is a problem for your infracstrutures? I can't understand it.

ó.ò

Oh my God that sucks man !! I hate this.... what will we do if we want to learn something or to meet new people ?? it's bad !! Why will you enter to skype then how will you meet new people ?? oh God !!!!! Skype rocks but after this he will be

RAISE YOUR FISTS..........FOR ANGERFISTSTTTTTTTT
im not happy with your dissition to close skypycast.ive built up my own skype family who i like very much,and are some of the nicest people ive ever met.
i have had some good laughs with nice people and had some not so good laughs with more people,but at the end of the day its made me think what freinds are all about ..............so plz reconcider your dissition to close skype.

...........I DONT WANT TO LOOSE CONTACT WITH MY GOOD FRIENDS................

This is stupid, in fact it is pathetic. There is obviously some other reason behind the closing of Skypecsats becasue it works well enough for most peoples satisfaction now and is a widely used product. As a software developer, I know for a fact that they could continue to offer the service while simultaneously developing it. I suspect that this very short-sighted decision has nothing to do with Skype's "philosophy" and more to do with a work to profit ratio. I for one will no longer use Skype as a poduct after Sept. 1, and I was seriously considering using it for phone service as well..

P.S. Im sure Infinitive_space actually works for Skype and was just posting his transparently lame comment posing as a real user. Notice how it is the first comment on the board and THE ONLY ONE in support of closing Skypecasts? What a dork.

I have met some of my best new friends via skypecasts. Despite some glitches, I think it's one of the best services available on the web. If not for skype and skypecasts, I wouldn't have so many new and good friends in countries around the world, we'd never have met to begin with. A year after I've met many of them, I can't imagine what it would be like if I hadn't. I truly hope if skype is working on something new, that it comes out the day after skypecasts are ended, because the potential to meet new people, and communicate with others around the world would be lost.

I'm very sorry to hear this news. I am a meditation teacher and president of a volunteer, nonprofit company that teaches an easy and inexpensive mental technique for dissolving stress and improving life. I was in the process of setting up a weekly chat that would have helped publicized my service. There aren't very many places on the Web where that is possible!

David Spector
NSR Meditation/USA
www.nsrusa.org

Skypecasts were becoming as rough as 27 megs then UHF CB so it was time to change to plan B. My only suggestion is that you get your finger out really quick because the other VOIP's are going to have a field-day.
Get it back ASAP or lose your biggest referers, the users.

As a UK account holder - I think Skype's thought process is dam stupid.You could appoint moderators etc. This is a cutting edge way of people communicating. You need to keep it as a brand. I hold 2 telephone accounts with Skype and have just renewed them before I heard about Skype comming off.

I won't renew.

Think again

R L UK

SKYPECASTALTERNATIVES.COM

is still not working. It may take another day or two or three. Please keep checking. I will try and serve the community first by putting up links to alternatives to skypecast and to other sites trying to do the same as me.

Email me at
shonangreg [at] gmail [dot] com
with suggestions or submissions or links.

Do a search for

skypecastalternatives
or
alternatives to skypecasts
or
alternatives to skypecast

to find the sites similar to mine.

To other webmasters. use the search keywords above to bring traffic to your site and cross-link with me.

Greg
shonangreg [at] gmail [dot] com

SKYPECASTALTERNATIVES.COM

"We'll be sure to let you know when that day arrives (ie skypecasts continue)." Peter Parkes

Skypecasts were good for the world - a lot of bad things said, but now people will understand and know each other a lot less - was there a religious or political agenda behind this? Otherwise, it is quite hard to understand.

I am heartbroken for the loss of Skypecasts. My husband and I have made numerous friends via this medium. We also use this form of communication within World of Warcraft, and have found that it is much clearer to use than the ingame chat option. Without Skypecast, it will be that much harder to host a conference call to support many of our guild members on the game. Please reconsider, although this will more than likely fall on deaf ears. Having seen the responses of many, I must also agree with the majority. It would be a mistake to remove this from such a wonderful way of communication with the world.
Whindd
just another good luck charm

I'm indeed shocked by the sudden news that you want to terminate the skypecast service, while you didn't give any reasonable reason at all to justify the action. Why do you want to do that???
There are so many internet chatting programs such as MSN, Yahoo. But when it comes to it, I'd say that Skype is the best largely due to the unique skypecast which enables lots of ppls who are not in each other's contactlists to join and talk about a shared interested topic and becoming friends later.
Although there are some ppls who are trying to do something bad via skypecast, comparing to its pros, I think it's really minor.
Please do not terminate it as so many current skypeusers like it very much. Or if you have a new function which is better than skypecast on the way, why don't you terminate skypecast when the new function is fulled finished and ready to be out.
Anyway, I don't know if you really care what we said. But I'm sure if you terminate it for no particular reason at all, the Skype company will lose its credit to a lot of users and me and lots of skypeusers will just turn to other chatting programs and abondon skype as well.
Thank you for reading!

This is a wrong decision.

Just when I for one had seen and finally convinced my bosses that skypecasts have a business value (we were starting plans to include skypecasts in our marketing model) you retire them?! Insane.

Skypecasts have kept me entertained for hours while I worked on projects in my relative isolation as a programmer/engineer. The diversity and spontenaiety of a skypecast is what attracted me to skype in the first place.

I am deeply disappointed. If it is a matter of resources and quality, then contact people like myself. I can dedicate a server to skype if skype can dedicate such a great free service to me. Many of us at one point or another ran IRC servers, BBS nodes (really old school) or even jabber servers for their local community.

How many would be willing to run a skype server/supernode for the global skype community?!

It is sad news, although I would agree that the Skypecast technology was definitely not up to scratch. However, why can't they work on it and leave the existing Skypecast system running?

An alternative is Paltalk: http://www.paltalk.com although not exactly the same as only one person can speak at a time.

Hopefully, Skypecasts will return soon or there is better alternative software made available soon.

Regards,

Ryan
http://www.operation513.com

Highly questionable decision. It's all been said above, so I won't carry on; but will highlight two points:

1) The short notice is UNACCEPTABLE. A lot of people on this service work very hard on their Skypecasts to help build the community that YOU are half-heartedly praising. You just pulled the rug out from under them and have sent them scrambling to find alternatives. Not very gracious and absolutely INEXCUSABLE behavior.
2) The question has been asked; why not allow the old Skypecasts to run until the new version can be introduced in tandem? Excellent idea, and I can't understand why this wouldn't be the case. I can't help but wonder: Is the management at Skype just inept . . . or are you hiding something?

i am glad skypecasts are going to be shutdown. it means guys like 'freedom is america' wont be able to promote his hatred anymore. furthermore, he will probably kill himself now that there are no skypecasts, and that is priceless. we know skypecasts is his life.

judging by skypecasts performance over the past 2 years, its clear that skype had no interest in developing skypecasts. what kind of program stays in beta for 2yrs anyway. the reason why skypecasts is being closed is not because skype has high standards. anyone who has tried to get a hold of skypes customer service knows about its low standards. lets remember that skype is a business and their interest is to make money. there really isnt a point for them to keep skypecasts because it is not making them any money. skype wont lose any money by abandoning skypecasts. their number of customers are going to grow with or without skypecasts. and for all you guys who are telling your stories about making friends, lets be honest, do you really think skype cares if you have 100 or 0 friends (like freedom is america)?

Friends,

I would like to direct you to check out www.calliflower.com. Very similar functionality to a SkypeCast -- we can accomodate hundreds of callers on a call -- and it works fine from Skype. I'm on a call right now, with several folks on Skype (including Skype Journal's Jim Courtney).

Alec Saunders,
CEO

Dear Skype: I must be honest and say that your decision is bitter-sweet. On the one hand I host a comedy cast (The PNut Show http://www.peternut.com/live/live.html) to spread some humor around the world. Something lacking in today's society. Skype has been an excellent tool to do this and meet many others around the world had Skypecasts not been active. Skypecasts are a revolutionary idea which I would hate to see go. On the other hand MOST of the casts I must admit are absolute garbage. No quality programming or standards, some are enough to make me nauseous. I constantly report on these types and those who abuse the casts themselves. It is a shame that the same old story continues, "The few spoil it for the many." When will mankind learn? I understand your decision and hope to see Skypecasts return with a more structured and savvy system in place. Thank you for providing this free service, for many of the poor in our world this is an only option.

Sincerely,

Tim Wall
President
peternut.com

Link Correction: http://www.peternut.com/live/live.html

"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."

Wrong this decision is consistent with a corporation that wants to rip apart communities. Nothing said global community like skypecasts. Now we are in the dark, with our contact lists set in stone.

We will migrate to competitors you clowns.

Dear Skype,

I have been hosting my own skypecast "Happy Talk" for the last couple of months. I have made many friends from this cast. I am saddened to hear that you will be closing down the skypecast rooms. I understand that there are many rooms that do not conform to the skypecast rules, and its not cost effective. However, I hope that in the very near future you bring back the skypecasts rooms, and that you pay the hosts that have good rooms. I created a website for all skype members to join, so that we can all keep in touch, until we can find a new alternative to the skypecast rooms. The website is http://floridavacantlandsales.ning.com/ and i will post where we will all be going for a new voice audio chat.

Thanks,

Ben Torres

well, it was fun while it lasted wasn't it? I met some really incredible people here on Skype. I have often heard synics say "you cant make real friends on the internet." I beg to differ. I have made some strong relationships here. I met people like Rhona, and Pojo, and Jade, and even Michelle the too hott girl. I even look upon you with fondness. There have been many laughs, and many arguments, MANY romances and tons of friendships formed. It has been an incredible social tool for me. I have made so many dear friends, and met some really freaky people. For me, it could not have been better. A lot of our American Soldiers are on skype now, so they can keep in touch with loved ones at home. God Bless you men and women in uniform, thank you for your service.
Every morning I looked forward to the Nice Guy from Kiwi Land, good ol' Marcus himself. He had some good casts for a long time. Rhona and Pojo both had some great casts. I even held a couple meself, havin a pretty fair success rate. I remember my first cast was a superb lady from Canada, Candlelight1 I believe it was, she was such a sweet lady. That is what got me started. From there it snowballed into a full blown obsession. LOL I just couldnt wait to get finished with what ever it was I was doing during the day to get back with "the gang". And what a motley crew we were too. Poor Amy T, a more gullible soul never existed, but you cannot help but love her. In short and finally, I have laughed many, many hours, and had a lot of fun here. I will miss the skype cast. May it rest in peace.

Something for the Skype guys to think about! (If they still use there brain!!!)

"Every great MISTAKE has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied."
-Pearl S. Buck-


...

NOOOOOOOOO WE LOVE SKYPECASTS!!!!!!!
DO NOT END THEM!!!!!!!!

Hello to the cast community, if this news is correct then it does not surprise me in any way, but the truth of the matter is that Skype as a company have been treating the Skypecast Community with contempt for a long time now.
When the program was working well last year it was a great way to meet new and old friends in Skypecasts, but then it stated to go downhill, and no amount of reports sent to Skype have been met with any satisfactory response, as most of you know the audio has been so bad in the last 4 or 5 months that it has been impossible to hold a cast with more than 3 or 4 people in talking without the audio going to pot, instead of finding a way to correct this problem Skype has just sat on it and done nothing, to me this shows a complete disregard for the many good people who use casts, and that they don’t give a damn about thousands of people who come into casts to talk and listen to what others may have to communicate to each other.
This move I find to remove Skypecasts is very short sighted on behalf of a company that is running a communication business and it could come back to bite them in the backside so to speak, as I have said to many people although Skypecast are free, it is the free sweetie’s that get the customers into the shop, so without Skypecasts I can see their revenue drop and that will hurt them in the long term.
Anyway those of you who know me have met me in C&C and we had a good cast going, but due to the inaction of Skype not to improve matters I have not run it for some weeks now, for that I apologise, but I was not prepared to lower standards in the cast just because this company would not get off of it’s backside and get it running as it should be, I feel sorry for those who are relatively new to Skype because they did not get to see how it was when it was running well, maybe they will in the future, maybe not, still if those who know us feel lonely come and see us in the website where we will attempt to keep you all up to date as to what is happening: we will be looking for alternative sites to run the show and if they are successful goodbye to Skype.

So my final words are to those faceless executives who run this company, think again and keep this community together, if you cannot see what a great opportunity you have in the communications world to do so much good then maybe you would be better off sweeping the streets.

www.coffeenconversation.co.uk

Philosophically, we continue to believe in the concept of Skypecasts:

Yes ........with money money money money.....puah :

Thank you for the confirmation Peter.Take care, good call.

Well skype this is the pits can't believe that skypecasts is closing made some good friends on the casts hoped to meet more but doesn't look likely end of an era

I can understand it that casts to be adjusted.
You want to money-make and with casts can no money be earned.

Others seits, know itself now all humans it live to care.

"This move I find to remove Skypecasts is very short sighted on behalf of a company that is running a communication business" - enough said.

I'm shocked and unhappy to hear that casts are ending. We do have people who misuse the service, however you will find people like that everywhere. I have, however, met more people who are decent and who like to discuss and debate with reason, and sometimes jokes and banter. I will miss Skype.
The quality of the sound has been reduced to such an inconsistent level that some of the casts are a pain. The quality of the casts, a while a go, was fantastic and fun was had by all.
I hope you resurrect Skypecasts, as I will miss it greatly. You have provided a brillant platform for free speech. I have heard every view point that can be voiced, and I've had the chance to question, reply and comment on every subject.
This has worked so well because it is a free service, I hope it continues to be so in it's new version.
I thank you for the services you have supplied over these past years.

All hail Skypecasts!

I was expecting this (bad) news... is it a matter of money maybe? For quite sometime I've been thinking ... they will make us pay for this.. let me tell you: I'm not subscribed to any group or whatever, but I'm ready to contribute, if this is the case, I'm not rich, but I enjoyed skype a lot and thank those people behind all this. So.. let us know, we will support you always.. thank you.

I will miss skypecast,its had its ups and downs but through it all I made really great friends from all over the world and I could not have done it without skypecast.I hope that the cast will be down only temperary and very shortly so that we all can make more friends in the future.Please bring back skypecast soon.

Without casts, I will head for an other service. Goodbye casts and goodbye Skype.

Your decision saddens me because you remove one of the few means of dialogue between nations. Indeed, I organize regular skypecasts the benefit of certain nations that can not organize their homes democratic forums.

Look on the upside: no more Mike Kennedy.

Fantastic news!! Now I just need Mebeam to shut down and I can get my life back.

No way!
I am sooooooooooooo sad that I can't even post here.
What the h.e double "l" I'm going to do with my life.?

Business as usual. Thanks for killing the community we ALL invested in.

i am so saddened that the casts are closing down... i hope that skype fixs the problem and gets it back running..i very much enjoyed useing the casts and over the years have meet some nice people on there....it's sad that there are poeple out there that want these casts closed down......

Thanks for the great memories skype

NOW GET OFF YOUR ARSE AND FIX THE CAST NOT CLOSE THEM

We have made some great friends on skype and some not so nice ones too. Skype needs to fix the problems they have not close things down. Im sure if they asked the users in skypecast what needs to be done they would be able to tell you.

Im a xkypeoholix and it is because of the people in skypecasts. Where can you go and talk to people all over the world in one cast. We have all learnt at sometime or other from people in other countries about themselves and their countries.

So what have we got out of skype.
We have great friends a website https://www.xkypeoholix.com/cms/ for putting up with their crappy sound in casts and casts that drop people out all the time.

And when skype decides to bring back casts it is going to take a while before everyone comes back and trusts skype enough to stick around.

SKYPE DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO.
IT IS NOT JUST YOUR ADVERTISING THAT GETS THE WORD OF SKYPE OUT THERE IT IS ALSO THE PEOPLE THAT USE SKYPECASTS

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES AND THE FUN TIMES TO ALL THOSE I HAVE MEET AND TALKED TO IN MY CASTS AND OTHER CASTS.

BUNDY

I was with skype from the beginning, will full phone priviliges, including skype in and skype out, voicemail etc...via my primary username. I also pay a few dollars a month, so that people from my home state could call me locally.

As a retired computer science professor, I used skype to pass on knowledge, answer people's questions, and participate in the debates both intellectual and fun.

If skypecasts are over, than I wish to close my account with you immediately, and I further demand that my credits be refunded. I am a paying customer who beleives that the real reason that you're doing this is that you don't have a clue as to management of such a large community, and to those who contributed to the debauchery--thanks! The shouting matches, death threats, terrorist and criminal conversations really helped out in thier deciding to pull the plug.

Also, let's remember that in the knee deep filth, was one thing worth fighting for...the other user you met who turned out to be a friend, a resource of information, or just a person who would listen.

SKYPE alone is responsible for refusing to fix the client software, so that people could choose what they did and did not want to see, and participate in.

SKYPE alone is responsible for not responding to the endless calls for fair and balanced montiroing, so as to catch the predators, criminals, jihadis, and other vermin crawling the net, looking for a victim.

SKYPE USERS are responsible for failing to collectively maintain control over their casts, partially by technical glitches, but more over an inability to understand that this has happened numerous times before...where a client VOIP conference protocol is created, published, abused, and shut down. It's called, "Going the way of NetMeeting" which had cams too!!! So that little female mind who said, "Well, that can't happen to skype..." GUESS WHAT!

SKYPE USERS are responsible for making all efforts to go through thier lists, and exchange some form of contact information so that programs which will allow for conferencing to resume can spread the word, and boycott skype.

ANYONE WHO IS PAYING FOR SKYPE---

If they kill skypecasting--delete the client, kill your account, and demand a refund of your existing credits...

I warned people repeatedly about the skype community needing to police itself, or someone else would--by pulling the plug altogether.

In closing, I wish to thank those I've met, especially those who gave me a good intellectual challenge, question, sparring, etc...I hope that in some medium we shall meet again and continue the debate. To those who want the free for all and chaos to reign--you've won again, but we all lost!

With a hurricane coming (Three named storms so far this week) to town, now I and others in the affected areas won't have someone to pass information along to after the storm--thanks skype!

boycotskypemovetopaltalk.com

I just found: http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com it's an alternative to Skypecasts and seems pretty good.

Regards,

Ryan
http://www.operation513.com

The Regard!
The Russian segment of the users skypecast yesterday's day was very distressed this information.
Much sting lose such facility of the contact - a thousand and a thousand of the users are separated from each other.
The most galling - a misty explanations about future this type of the services skype

How can you get rid of skypecasts? Skype casts ARE skype, nothing else. more than 95% of skype users use skypecasts on a daily basis, for singing, talking, chatting, finding love and things like that. Why take something away from people if you havent got a solition to make everyone happy. Don't do something you'll regreat.

I really shocked and unhappy to hear that casts are ending.your decison was look so ludicrous ..We strong ask you to reconsider to make everyboy happy and resurrect improve skypecasts service ...I have been meeting hundreads more people who are decent and who like to discuss and debate with reason,
.We acknowledged that You have provided a brillant free speech program whcin can access anywhere who can use ..
This has worked so well because it is a free service, I hope it continues to be so in it's new version. i also sometime paid some of credit for internationl calling ..
I thank you for the services you have supplied over these past years...
a lot of peoples use this skpecast to learn /teach /instruct for a lot of reasons at differnt country free of charge ..it is really useful to communicate with them .. Please one more think twice to keep going this skypecast to access everyone as they did it before !

Ok folks,after confirming a few things with Skype personnel I do owe Mr Peter Parkes an apology..He is after all only the bearer of bad news. Skypecasts do indeed close Sept 1. So if my post gave you any hope this was all a hoax Im sorry.
I have been able to squeeze a small bit of info out regarding a possible reintroduction of Skypecasts in the future. They do have a team working on this I am told and it will be much better. But as we all know much better can mean censorship out the ying yang and basically no freedom of expression. And judging by Skypes past history with improvements I think we can all stick a fork in this one.
Skype management I now realize you chose this forum to announce this just to let people comment but you could have done it so much better either through Heartbeat or actually announcing in your front page somewhere or emails. I will also say you shot yourself in the foot here by dropping the ball. You have now deprived the WORLD of its opportunity to communicate an meet an discuss topics freely..But hey at least you let us know it was possible.
In any case its been a fun ride... And to all the people that contributed an enjoyed a good laff an a smoke in my place I thank you and hope to see you on another chat somewhere down the beat an path. If anyones wondering there is a final Skypecast saturday nite...Peace\//

- Doobius -
proud owner of skypes first official an longest running skypecast
"Because I got High" cast

Many of us will leave Skype completly only of this closing. We will chance to another program that can give us the feature we love.

Thanks for skypecast !

I have been hosting regularly and I met so many nice people from all over the world .
Although I felt so sad to hear the bad news, I enjoyed this program for 2 years .

I hope to see better one in the near future . Thank you so much .

july

Thanks a lot skype you can go shove your service where the sun don't shine then! I have become disabled and find that this has been away for me to meet and talk to people to take away the isolation and lonliness, no you have taken that away thanks a bunch I will stop using you service all together and never return!

Most casts are rubbish, many are good. I feel uneasy about some of the foreign casts. Know what I mean? A fee of $5.00 per month is not out of the question? Keep it going

Hello! I regret this terrible news, closing Skypecasts not think it's a good idea, his popularity had much to do in the amount of users who now use Skype to call tlf fixed or mobile.
As you say there are countless programs to call a reduced price even more economic but the hook of Skypecasts favoured the use of this unique program as I do.
In short it is a pity but I believe that little can be done, if anything give my testimony
I have the joy of having made good use of this medium and has a number of users on my list of contacts with whom I will continue to maintain contact and continue learning and sharing things very pleasant moments.
Not only were a means of entertainment have also been a way for me learning about different cultures, computer and a long list.
With a lot of punishment and lastly I want to say goodbye to thank everyone who made it possible to secure a very big team that has nothing to do with the closure of Skypecasts thank you very much for everything to get

I realy feel very sad, by this news ..i have met so meany nice people on here, it`s been a lot of fun for me , But you guy`s realy do need to fix a lot of stuff on here realy...THANK`s WOOFIE

SKYPE: BIG MISTAKE! You are showing that your regard for the maintenance of the skype community, as you call it, is not a real commitment. The Skypecast community is a web that adds additional strength to the Skype company.

Apparently, the company doesn't realize that Skypecasts users are a substantial portion of the total customer usage base, Is it wise to piss of so many customers, at one time?

All the work you have done, to build your business, will be affected by the reduced visibility, received, via skypecasts, by skype members.

All I can say is good luck... I predict you will see a noticeaible drop in revenue growth, and product visibility, due to this decision.

I am not sure what I am going to do as a result of this decision.
Boycott of Skype may be a possibility..

Movement to another service similar to the Skypecast service is definite.

To conclude: The decision made has poisoned my view of the Skype Company.... I now realize, company management really doesn't understand the business model and how the communications links hold Skype together.

I might be time to rethink your move.... It's up to you... Good luck.

I want to thanks for you're services. Skypecast is a very nice "on line" place. It's very sorry that you had decided to retire skypecast from your services. This used to be a "on line" places to learn many things like culture, lenguages, the diferents ways that english and spanish can be spoken; I had found very amazing people that has tha same job like me (I'm a tecaher who makes research) and can talk about this at your skypecast.I have a speciall remember when I wasn't sure to be divorced and I opened a skypecast when all the people help me to make a decitión. Besides, I found love in a skypecast !!! We can't deny that there is crazy people who uses this service for other things but, you may find the way to stop them and make skypecast the great service that you pretend, that is your challenge.
I really thing that your trully reazon for stop offering skypecast is that you don't have the enough resources to suport them .... so ... the history change ... be my guest.

I am willing to PAY! Money to have skype casts! I have a pro account and I use skype for calls I have been thinking about getting more services. But skype casts are what got me started and they are fun I am sure this is about money so I will pay, Just give us that option.

There are lot of alternatives available. check out a huge list here: http://voipguides.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-conference-call-service-providers.html
and also video conference calls provider list: http://voipguides.blogspot.com/2008/06/video-conference-calls-services.html

The reason for closing the skypecasts is imho that the casts became a meeting place for all sorts of fringe groups like anarchists, conspiracies theorists and so on. Governments don't like it. They put pressure on Skype forcing the Skype to close its casts.
But since there is the demand there will be the supply.

as a skypecasts user i must say that most if not all of my skype activity was using the casts.
without the casts skype will be just an icon on my desktop.
shame.

I am grateful to you for your having offered Skypecasts – group communication on a specific topic of interest. Thank you. !!!
And I feel very disappointing that this service is finished.
I can understand your decision, but this notice is too sudden and causes the confusion of the skypecast user.
You should think about the size of the range where the end of this service affects.

I and all Skypecasts users pray heartily,
You look for ways to reintroduce this functionality in a way that lives up to both our and our community's high standards.. And release a new and improved Skypecasts product in the not too distant future.

I say “Let’s join Skypecast!"

When I created BlogTalkRadio (www.blogtalkradio.com) the skypecast offering was the only platform I could find that allowed people/groups to communicate with each other using voice. While, I thought the offering filled a void in the marketplace, I found serious flaws in the execution.

First, the need to download skype eliminates not only millions of hosts but many more guests or listeners. Second, we live in an on demand world. People want to consume content when they want to and not have to soley rely on a scheduled timed format. Skypecasts were not archived as a podcast. Lastly, if you are going to create a network of on going conversations, the network needs to be managed. When I spent hours on the platform in the summer of 2006, very often, the hosts for scheduled shows rarely showed up.

At BlogTalkRadio, we created a platform that addresses these issues and more. SInce we created BTR in September 2006, we have produced more than 125,000 segments, hosted by tens of thousands of different individuals, companies, organizations, etc.

We have incorporated a flash based VOIP interface which allows people anywhere in the world to interact with the host without dialing a US phone number or downloading a voip client.

Our service is free and we welcome anyone looking for a place to listen to or hosts an engaging conversation to give us a look.

Alan Levy
Founder and CEO
www.blogtalkradio.com

I think that is weak of Skype! There were nor problems at all allthe tme I used Skypecasts. There are Idiots but more normal and nice people than those stupid ones. So you punish everybody just because a minority . I think that is very weak!!

Kevin I only heard you last night having a bit of a cry over skypes demise ? A little hypocritical ain't it.

I have read the many responses to shutting down the skypecast service… and it is evident that Skypecasts have a passionate community that feels strongly about the technology.

I am considerably surprised at the lack of imagination and myopic vision that Skype has as a technological company that supposedly prides itself on “high standards and expectations for connecting and delighting (our) users”. The buzz words of recent history have centred around that of "social networks" and it is incredible that Skype is seeming throwing away (if the “retirement” is permanent) a foundation for building superb voice-based social networks that can easily be commercialised without huge investment.

I’m sure that even as the service stands now, that because of the social community that has built up around this technology, users would already be willing to pay a small fee even with its flaws and imperfections... I am in agreement with appliantologist that with few tweaks and improvements people would actually expect to pay a reasonable fee for such a service.

Skype seems to have underestimated the value that people place upon communal voice-based social interaction because the era of social networking is still in its infancy. Skype seems to have missed the “emotional hook” gets into people that use Skypecasts. Many of the Skypecast “characters” though they may be loved and hated in Skypecasts, keep people coming back, and people just love to talk, gossip and argue amongst themselves. This is what keeps people using the service and using it for more than pure telephony. It is this that differentiates Skype from other voip “telephony” services in the market. It is the skypecast community that turns Skypecasts into content product and entertainment, and what’s more it’s freely provided by the public to Skype.

It is this is, after all, that is at heart of social networks and is keenly being commercialised i.e. communities and what people provide and give to each other freely. The particular mix that skypecasts have struck is a good one and very appealing; “global live and interactive talk radio that provides an open platform for those who love to talk, connect, be entertained, and share information”… well, that’s how I see it.

If Skype management cannot envisage a future beyond straight-forward (video) telephony, instant messaging and file sending they are not reading the signs of the times, they are downright foolish.. and yes, like it has been suggested, not only will other companies gain a competitive edge over Skype through it's blunders, they will be “retiring” a very lucrative avenue for development and commercial opportunity built on the foundations of a potentially very loyal and enthusiastic online community; a winning recipe in a digital world.

I would hope that Skypecasts are revived and that they bounce back refreshed and ready for a public that not only adores its quirky nature but is willing to pay to keep it.

Mireille (Quantum000)

SO long and thanks for all the fish!

OMG. I NEED SKYPECASTS!!!!!!!
i cant believe this, i loved joining skypecasts whenever i felt bored, it was a great way for me to learn from others and to meet new people. I am really disappointed that there will be no more skypecasts. I also remember meeting a really good friend from a skypecast, i also have friends learning japanese from a skypecast.I will think they will disappointed too.
To be honest, whenever i sign on to skype, i am always looking forward to joining a skypecast, one of the main reasons why i love skype!
But i guess the decision cannot be changed, i hope the Skypeteam does bring back Skypecasts soon!

=O >>> =/ >>> /=Z

REST IN PEACE

but please wake up again.

Love Daisy

Hi Peter,

I am a Canadian working in China.Thanks to Skypecast,I met a lot of wonderful Chinese people who enjoyed using Skype so much duo to the special feature of the cast.Trust me,Skypecast is the soul of Skype! Taking it off,you guys are making the biggest mistake which will result in a huge loss of you market in China where QQ (a chinese IM which has all the features that Skype has except the cast )would be more than happy to see such a stupit decision were made by you guys!

If the only true reason to close the skypecast is the cost,why don't you make a survey on how much people in the world would like to pay for hosting a cast? If the price is accepted by most of the hosts,and the cost of your server and maintenance can be covered,why not keep it so that Skype as whole can still remain competitive? Don't kill YOUR SOUL if you want survive in this world! Think it over Please!!!

It is really stupid decision to give up skypecast !
Actually you guys have no idea to make more people know Skype, the people around me just never know skypecast, but when they used skype cast one time , they love it so much , just like me.

Mirelle,
I could not agree with you more. It has for me been an incredible social tool. Indeed, while we do argue and carry on and such, it is these factors that keep us coming back time and again. We have become to each other an extended family of sorts. Albeit rather dysfunctional at times, a family none the less.

I have enjoyed the skypecasts along with all of you, but I must say that for some of you to gripe over something that was provided completely free to you is pretty lame. It costs money to provide the amount resources to run skypecasts and there two reasons why they could not provide this service indefinitely. The first reason is that it is just not good business. Every company will provide incentives for people to get to know their service in hopes that many will sign on to their premium service. I happen to use and pay for quite a bit of their other services. The reality is that many of the paid services were suffering because of the amount of resources that are being consumed by the non paying services. In plain English, most of the complaints are coming from those of you who have never paid a dime for any skype services at all and are the same people who post all kinds of Skype Sucks messages whenever you could not get the free services. These guys aren't going to say it but I will and I hope they post it.

As a paid user, what really has sucked is having the quality of my calls go down because too much was being drained by the non paying community. Maybe if more people had paid for premium services, Skype could afford to expand and provide enough power for all. But in the end I believe they had a choice between raising the cost of premium services to cover what the casts were eating up, or discontinuing the casts to provide the best quality service for its paying customers. God forbid they would have started charging for the cast membership... you freeloaders would have called for a boycott of something you never spent a dime on to begin with.

Skype is a business. Not a welfare program or communist state. God knows if it was the many of you could not even say half the things you say on here in any public venue in your own countries. It takes money to run Skype. Why don't you open up your food pantry for 8 million people a day and see how many you can feed on the off chance that a small percentage are willing to give a donation for the next meal. See how long you can feed people. Skype has done an outstanding job but I think it is stretched to the limit trying to accommodate everybody. What they are doing is smart for the long term health of its brand.

For all those who enjoy singing. The same people trashed SingSnap for having the gall to ask people to start paying for their services after giving it away for free while they were building up the site. And yes SingSnap has gone through its problems just like Skype but the quality of its offerings are improving because it has the money and resources now from more paid users. I suppose the lady giving out the free taste samples at the market is betraying you unless she also gives you a free box of the product indefinitely?

No doubt that closing the casts will vastly improve the quality of their voice call services and attract a whole new base of customers who have been reluctant to come on board because of what we affectionately call "the Skype Monster"... Guess what folks... look in the mirror... that monster was all of us.

Nothing is free forever. Even Yahoo eventually limited custom rooms but mostly due to abuse. How about thanking Skype for putting up with us as long as they could afford it and just get over yourselves. They even expanded conference calls to accommodate you even though it is not the same. If you want to see how much it costs to provide this service then I suggest a few of you decide to hire a programming engineer and come up with your own community for free and see how long you can afford it. I sure am going to miss the casts and the fun I had with many of you. But I am going to enjoy more having a better quality service for my paid calls.

To the folks at Skype. Thanks for the memories. You have provided a great community service. Even though it was also provided to get paying customers, you still did a great job all things considered. Now if my other services continue to suck after ending the casts... you are going to have one hell of an angry paying customer on your hands. I am betting, you know what you are doing and Skype is going to have a formidable VOIP market presence in short order. Here's to the future.

It's a bad bad news :'(

I love Skype, I have met, laughed and sang with some wonderful people. I think you are making a huge mistake. I could manage without Skype, but some of the wonderful people I have met are housebound or lonely for one reason or another, and Skype has helped them cope and deal with this. I love chatting and running casts and I will miss all the friends I have made in the casts.

I hope you change your mind and correct the problem rather than get rid.

GET IT SORTED

Goddamgood1 (Melanie)

I would want to say that skypecasts were a cool feature in skype and I was just starting to use them, but it seems I would need to wait for the new version of skypecasts.
What if skype charged for example 1 Euro cent from every minute you talk in skypecasts and put a more strickt monitoring system there. Then I think skypecasting community will improve certainly, but skype needs to do it now. There is now time to wait for tomorrow, because then there might be loads and lots of services running the same thing. Of course for free in the beginning, but in the end it all comes down to maintenance, therefore I think that Skype will actuelly lose a lot of clientell at the first moment, because such is the effect of mass psychosis. While looking ahead I think that skype can survive, if it puts more effert to provide a quality service. Otherwise it just won't be possible.

I don't really understand the outrage from you lot when none of us pay for the service. I buy Skype credit and such but cast have always been free. Skypecast have surely been good for advertising purposes but its not as though they are stealing you lots money or anything. There is no reason to type an entire paragraph in all caps Dina, really. I think paying for the service of Skypecast would improve the quality of Skype user but how many of you would actually be willing to pay even a nominal fee? Maybe Skype could just charge host for service but I doubt many cast would be run if that was the case. Even with word-of-mouth advertising I doubt cast are really worth the servers they require to run. Everyone is just bitching about something they aren't really willing to pay for.

I downloaded skype to use as a VOIP and the added service of Skype Mobile has been top notch and all the services I pay for have worked flawlessly. Meeting the people I have had the opportunity to meet through Skypecast has been an added bonus but as a pay service I doubt it would be the same.

You will be remembered.

Who cares if it goes i know there is something around the way and its going to be a lot bigger and a lot better than any skypecast if you want to know more feel free to drop me a messege on skpye djblade2006

if it goes its about time it did because of everyone that abuses it and provokes others no to mechanic the quality of the calls half the time or people hacking into them and making people go off line or crashing the cast too much can go wrong with theses casts what happened to the old skypecast days everyone was happy and there wasn't that many problems.

Look at it now too many problems and too many abusive people on it.

Anyway if it don't go then its just another hoax in the box to add to will soon find out by the end of Monday.

Bonjour from France !

What I can understand from your Communiqué is :
1. We cannot guarantee quality on it
2. So we prefer to stop developping and supporting that product
3. and we look forward to deliver a good one as soon as possible.
This may be more clear that way.
Take care people don't find a better alternative trying to get a solution to satisfy their needs...

I hope you all understand at Skype (and stakeholders) that you have been very successfull so far since you have delivered a good product with good funtionnalities and QoS that fitted our needs with no constraints no advertising and other stupid things.

Things I appreciate with skype :
* VoIP ability (but not very competitive and easy to use) with Internet -to-old fashion Phones gateway
* Outlook automatic synchronization into Skype (although I'd prefer to have the choice to confirme or not).
* Third party applications (although this may be usefil to get some of those fully integrated and free of charge)

Regards,

Marc

What a shame. The foul-mouthed morons that spoiled some casts have finally spoiled the whole thing. Well done morons!

Oh，It is a rumor,skypecast is still well running.

Hoax?
Social experiment?
Mistake?
Change of heart?
or just running late?

The event was announced on the forum,
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=193321

A critical bug was written off on the basis that Skypecasts were closing,
https://developer.skype.com/jira/browse/SCW-839

There's more to this than a simple hoax.

Ok..what can we do.. that´s the price we pay for not be paying a price! If Skypecast were charged i´ll bet ya we wouldn´t be here!
Still i hate what they are doing.. but i also understend cause whe complained a looooooot when the thing wasn´t working.. (sorry bad English)

cheers!
Fred

This makes me really sad. I LOVED the Skypecasts. It's what got me hooked on Skype in the first place. So many lovely casts I have been in and so many wonderful people I've met through them.

I can chat and use video and audio in my chats with other IM's. What reason do I have for sticking with Skype now? The whole community-part is gone. I don't want to log in and then have nothing to do but to stare on my screen until one of my friends *may* pop in.

This is just horrible.

"We hope we’ll be able to release a new and improved Skypecasts product in the not too distant future."
You "hope"? In the "not too distant future"?
Well, let me know when you do and I'll get back online. Until then, have a good time everyone. I'll be asking my friends (the ones I managed to make before you took the option of making friends away) to join me at another *not at all different now* IM.

why was my msgs removed did i say something i shouldnt ??? all i said was that BLEEP was an BLEEPside BLEEP whats wrong with that ?? anyway like i said before i enjoyed casting with you all and i hope to return soon to meet you all again . IF SKYPE COULD PREVENT THE HACKS WE WOULD ALL HAVE A MARVELLOUS TIME. also if you need admin to moderate these casts id be glad to do so. GOODBYE WORLD

I don't believe this is to do with anything more than Skypecasts not fitting Ebay/Skypes business model. Skypecasts eat a lot of resources, not so much that I would have thought it threatened Skype's premium services. As nicely as Skype's message is about closing casts it is surely untrue. Ebay are not an altruistic company, they want to make money. Of course there are those that will misuse the service. Which makes me lol because how many counterfitters are caught on Ebay everyday and prosecuted in their respective countries for mis-selling goods. And what does Ebay do about that ? Exactly .... the only way Skypecasts will come back with Ebay is with embedded advertising or an annual membership fee. Go oovoo, and go anyone else who takes on the mantel of providing such brilliance as Skypecasts did with the motto of uniting the world through communication rather than trying to earn a fast back.

RIP Skypecasts, you will reincarnate sometime soon, hopefully not with Ebay, those brilliant technologists were fools to cash in and sell such great technology to such a company.

Alex Wales

Gun, foot, bullet, shoot. Sorry Ebay/Skype, you are losing customers as quick as British Telecom did when the market was opened up. You'll find it hard to recoup them. All the signs are there. Come up with something spectacular soon or lose them for ever. And never post a message saying you want to "delight" your customers because that is imeasurable, stick with just giving them a good customer experience. Remember, oovoo is laughing now. You probably think they don't have the capacity to accomodate so many new members but hey, foot, gun, bullet, go figure.

The Skypecasts were really the only thing that set Skype apart from so many other services.

Oh well, I guess since it's time to start exploring. To paraphrase Gloria Gaynor "I will survive."

Skype on the other hand...

You have lost a lot of customers by this act Skype, you should have listened to the positive reactions and not just the negative ones. Skypecast brought the world together and just like any other big corporation, you have torn it apart.

Stop listening to your bank account and start listening to conscience and maybe, just maybe, you may win a few people back.

Please fix Skypecast and re-release, sooner rather than later. You will not regret it.

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 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 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