Skype winks at the business world and doubles the maximum number of participants in a video call. It also changes the way the call is notified
Group video calls on Skype change again, and it's both a "quantitative" and "qualitative" change. The main novelty is the support for video calls up to 50 participants. It also changes the notification system of group video calls.
These novelties have been announced by Microsoft on the official Skype blog and have been introduced with version 8.41.76.55 of the famous VoIP and video calling service. Until the previous version, Skype users could make video calls with up to 25 users at the same time, while now this number doubles. Microsoft says that you can use this new feature both with your best friends and with your colleagues.
It is clear, however, that such a high number of participants will be useful especially for business video calls and this confirms Microsoft's desire to strengthen Skype's position as a business tool. It's clear, however, that such a high number of participants will be useful especially for business video calls, and this confirms Microsoft's desire to strengthen its position as a business tool. Apple's service, in fact, stops at 32 participants. As FaceTime, however, even Skype has recently been affected by an annoying, and dangerous for privacy, bug related to group video calls. The two services, then, seem to chase each other with features but, paradoxically, share some problems arising from the increasing complexity of these applications. Managing notifications and audio and video streams of a video call with 32 or even 50 participants, in fact, is not a joke even for two giants like Microsoft and Apple.
Skype, the other news of the last update
Another novelty introduced with version 8.41.76.55 of Skype concerns the notifications used by Skype to warn users of the incoming video call. Until now, those who were invited to a group video call were notified with the classic ringtone, while for video calls above 25 participants in the future Skype will send a notification. Who starts the call can also choose to send the ring to selected participants, while for video calls under 25 users you can send the ring to everyone with a single click. In this way, then, the management of notifications can be customized by the user who initiates the group video call: notification only or notification plus ring.