Another good idea murdered by Microsoft. 
I used Skype for a while when I first came back to the UK in order to have a separate business phone number without putting in a new phone line, but eventually it became simpler
to have a dedicated line anyway (for broadband) - I moved the Skype number to Dial9, a VOIP provider.
But for conference calls, not being much in the Microdaft™ universe any more I use Zoom.
I stopped using Skype when they diddled me out of a tenner. The calls were free but for text messages you had to pay and keep a credit balance.
Hadn’t used it in a while and they sent me a message saying that I had no credit left so I stuck a fiver into the system. Next time I looked I saw I had 15 whatevers of credit. 10 of it must have been there when they made me put another 5 in.
Yes I used to advertise my photography with a wedding services website that worked like that - you had to buy “credits” which you then used to buy leads from prospective couples.
Of course the amount of credits you needed was never a round number so there were always some left over that effectively you couldn’t use unless you bought another block of credits.
Shysters.
No longer use it, but will miss it for nostalgic reasons.
Was introduced to it in 2006 by a lecturer in another university, who wanted me to do a video tutorial with one of his PhD student. Met my future wife the same year and we used Skype extensively for the next few years till she was able to migrate to the UK.
Skype also gave me a good grounding in video call presentation, which became really useful later when all my teaching went online rather than F2F.Still surprised today by how many professional journalists and international commentators pay little attention to online lighting, camera angle etc.
Yes indeed. People being interviewed by TV news seem to just stick a phone on top of a pile of books.
When Covid hit and our business networking group went on to Zoom to keep itself alive since we could no longer meet in person, I invested in a BlackMagic ATEM Mini video switcher, so I could use a proper camcorder as a webcam, and also switch to showing my computer screen easily in order to show my photographs. I had a couple of LED lights attached to the bookshelf above my desk.
It probably seems like overkill, but I have continued to use the same setup for client Zoom calls and people do comment on the professionalism / picture quality.