Microsoft Skype gets in on the Snapchat action, introduces Highlights feature

Microsoft did a major overhaul of Skype for iOS and Android and brings some features you might have seen on other messaging apps. One is its own version of Snapchat’s Stories that the company calls Highlights. If you’ve used Snapchat or Instagram Stories or even the one in Facebook, you’ll be familiar with how Highlights works. It’ll let you take a photo or video and decorate that with text or emojis and post those to that section. Unlike the other “Stories” formats, the content will be up for a week and will only be visible to people you follow. You can also send them to specific people or groups.

Skype is also more customizable in terms of the look of the app. It’ll allow you to decorate it in your favorite colour. There are also now Facebook-like reactions coming to both chats and Highlights. Cortana is also making its way to Skype. There will also be other chat bots like BigOven, Bing, Expedia, Giphy, Gfycat, MSN Weather, Polls, Stubhub, Upworthy, and YouTube. The video call feature of the app will now let you send things like large emojis, text messages, stickers, and photos over video chat. These will be overlaid on the screen. Aside from that, Skype plans to bring some gaming features into video chats in the future as well as letting people watch streaming videos together. The update comes to Android first and will be coming to iOS in around a month. Windows and Mac versions of the app will be getting these new features in the next few months.

Source: MacRumors