On the main blog, Peter Parkes today shares insights on the beginnings of Skype 4.0 for Windows. It's the first of a two-part post, with the second coming on Tuesday, describing "the way things work here at Skype, and giv(ing) an idea of what's to come."

He notes that " communication tools have remained largely unchanged since the mid-1990s. The vast majority of instant messaging software, for example, has always looked and behaved very similarly - and, until the release of Skype 4.0 for Windows, Skype was no exception.

One dramatic change in online communications is video. Skype introduced video calls in 2005.

Parkes noted: "Currently, over 25% of Skype calls include video, and with around 300,000 concurrent calls at peak times, that's a lot of video. So, rather than continuing to patch new features - including video - on to a design (and design metaphor) which was arguably already 10 years out of date, we decided to start from scratch.

"At that point, we set about asking ourselves serious questions about how to approach the development of the next big release of Skype for Windows."

Read more at the main blog.