Skype 5.0 beta - Group Video Chat, end of Freemium

Today Skype has rolled out the new beta version for Windows which supports group video calls for up to 5 people. Skype 5.0 beta is now available for download and testing, but with the warning that it may contain a lot of bugs. Despite the fact that the first official screenshot of Skype group video chat shows a boy and a grandmother, it's likely that most of its users will be business employees. Because as soon as the testing finished, the group video chat will become a paid feature. At the same time, there already some free group video chat solutions (for friends and families) on the market, for example, TinyChat, TokBox, PalBee. On the small business market there are also some strong players with paid solutions - ooVoo, SightSpeed and HP SkyRoom. However, everything will depend on the cost and quality, offered by Skype.

And Skype is recently thinking about earnings, which it could receive from hundreds of millions of its users, which basically do not call by SkypeOut but use free calls over the Internet. The company announced that it may soon show ads on free calls in Skype. Of course, this intention is fair, but we hope it will be not large annoying banners.

See also: Top 10 VoIP services