There are viable alternatives to Skype.<p>I&#x27;ve been using Slack (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slack.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slack.com&#x2F;</a>) for a while too... it does everything useful that you could ask of a chat application and works very much like IRC worked back in the day. Everything it doesn&#x27;t do natively, there&#x27;s an integration for, just like with IRC bots.<p>You can do:<p>- Private chat with one or more parties<p>- Open Group chat via channels (both private and public channels)<p>- Voice&#x2F;Video via numerous integrations including Bluejeans, Appear.in, Skype, Hangouts, you name it.<p>- ChatOps via services like IFTT &amp; Zapier or even your own custom bridge into your network.<p>- Get notifications right in Slack from your source control, build servers, JIRA, Confluence and any number of other services via webhook integrations.<p>- A billion other wicked cool integrations (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slack.com&#x2F;apps" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slack.com&#x2F;apps</a>) that allow you to do just about anything, including the eternally useless, often inappropriate and highly amusing Giphy.<p>- It&#x27;s free(ish)... the featureset is restricted on the free account, but even with the free account it has enough to be seriously useful to even loosely defined teams of adhoc members. For enterprise requirements there is a small per user&#x2F;per month charge which unlocks a wealth of enterprise ready features.<p>- It&#x27;s archivable &amp; searchable<p>Highly recommended and well worth a look for small and large teams alike.<p>It&#x27;s more targeted at teams, but for circles of friends, it works nicely too. Because of the way it&#x27;s structured, it works more like a web based, centrally hosted IRC server than Skype, as such it doesn&#x27;t really have the same network effect, but it&#x27;s so much more flexible than Skype in every other respect.