- Founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the Skype company is based in Luxembourg and now owned by an investor group that includes Ebay Inc, Silver Lake and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. According to its own statistics, Skype has around 30 million users online during peak hours, and it has around 145 million users per month, as of 2010. This program offers both free and paid services, with paid services offering additional features.
- With the free program, you can call other Skype users over the Internet. You can place either audio or video calls on your computer. You can also text chat, or instant message, with other Skype users. For a small fee, you can use Skype to call mobile phones or landlines. You can either opt to pay per minute, or you can pay for a certain amount of minutes upfront per month (at a lower rate). With paid subscriptions, you can also opt for text messaging, call forwarding, caller ID, voicemail, screen sharing and file transferring.
- Downloading Skype is free, and you can get it directly from the Skype website. You can also download the Skype app on any mobile device. When you download Skype, you also sign up for a username. Once it is downloaded and you sign in, you can create a contact list by searching for your friends' names or usernames. To place a call, the other user must be online at the same time, as indicated by a green mark next to his or her name.
- To get Skype on your iPhone, you must download the free app from the App Store. You can then sign in, just as you would on your computer. You can add new contacts, or you can tap a contact to place a call. As long as the other user is on Skype at the same time, he or she will appear as "online," and you will be able to connect. Because the iPhone 4 has a front-facing camera for Facetime, you can even make a video call.
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