On the main blog, CEO Josh Silverman shares his reflections on the past and his vision of Skype's future--on Skype's 5th Birthday.

He tips his hat to Skype founders Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis and the original Estonian programmers: "They simply couldn't have predicted where this journey would take them and millions of others - who, among them, have clocked up more than 100 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes. Visionary foresight is one thing. But expecting Skype to have touched close to 350 million users by year five, to have enabled billions of conversations, enriched and even enabled millions of relationships, and along the way to have helped transform one of the largest industries in the world? That would have been downright delusional."

He says: "When I think of the future, I think of Skype as liquid communication. Instead of being condemned to a frozen shape like the telephone, it will flow into any device whenever you want and wherever you are. And, like water can turn into ice or steam, Skype can shift its form to match what you need at the moment: from voice to video to IM to SMS to filesharing.

"Skype blurs the line between the real and the virtual. It bends space and cuts through time. Today, when a conversation wants to be had, technology is not the bottleneck. But technology isn't the goal either. There's no question in my mind about what stands at the heart of the communication revolution. So, as we celebrate the first five years of Skype, let's raise a toast to the human desire to connect."