Any Chance Skype Will Return to Searches by Age, Genger, Language, City, State and Country?

[starknaked]

cyberbiker you are right. However I may add that Google Voice is more superior than Skype(Google Talk has similar functionality to Skype but lately everything start becoming more homogeneous) .

It is basically more useful, affordable and different.You can use Google Voice with a software and with your phone in the US(now Google Voice is integrated into Gmail). Phone calls in the US and Canada are free. I like the voicemail, the way it gets transcribed, the ability to record voice calls etc. 

Most importantly Google Voice does not have a Connection Fee. Skype has such a fee on top of already inflated rates.

If I am not much mistaken about 5 years ago Skype to phone calls were FREE for the US and Canada. After that they started charging.

[cyberbiker]

I don't recall when Skype calls in the US were free, but regardless, I have been a loyal Skype user and admirer since 1997.  It led the telecom industry to far lower telephone rates and deserves credit for that.  However, time marches on and it's market is now far more competitive.  Those competitors (Google and Yahoo) both have greater leverage over goverments in lesser developed nations due to other services those governments do not want to lose.

Skype can respond by resting on its laurels as Earthlink and AOL did, with the same result, or get more competitive.  Microsoft has let investments fail; it has merged them into its other services and software; and it has permitted some to continue to operate independently.  We'll see within a year which direction it chooses.  My guess is that Skype's previous owners saw the competition catching up and made a timely sale before revenues began dropping.

[RpD]

Having just gotten a spam/scam Skype call -and- SMS text message forwarded to my cell, I will agree with TheUberOverLord's explanation.
I can see the sense of some -broad- location search criteria, like city, but I'm against further 'demographic' criteria, like language, gender and age range. Social data is for social sites... Skype is communications first.

[jrbman]

It's an old thread now but yes, please let us narrow by city or at least country.  This wouldn't help anyone farming for data but would make it much more useful.  The lack of this feature makes it very hard to find contacts that I know are on skype, and as a result I don't use skype as much as I would otherwise.

[jonrichco]

Skype is hopeless - I have been writing to them about this for a couple of years at least. It is ESSENTIAL that Skype restores this capability, otherwise the value of the program is greatly reduced

[cyberbiker · Accepted solution]

Jonrichco, Skype definitely knows what it did and why.  It is also aware of our objections.  There was a clear tradeoff in customer satisfaction and it decided to opt for greater customer privacy.   It was probably getting complaints from users who felt harrassed by other Skype members who abused the information available.  With the number of inconsiderate, sexually repressed people out there, I imagine many young women received unwanted advances or worse.

We both would have preferred Skype let indivuduals handle it through their own privacy settings.  However, in legtigious countries like the US, Skype would still have been charged routinely in frivolous lawsuits and ended up spending money to defend itself.

The capability is still there if you download and install version 4.2x, which I use on one of my computers.  In any version it is a heck of a service that saves us a ton of money.  If it didn't, none of us would use it.

[Black_Catz]

I hope they never bring this back. It leaves users open to abuse through the search system and seeing as I received about 10 new contacts in less than 5 minutes this morning, I believe that having older versions of skype like this available is a huge privacy concern. 

Now, you may say that you can filter who messages you through the privacy settings menus, however, a contact of mine was having the same problem that I was and she CAN NOT change the privacy settings to allow various forms of contact to only those on her contact list.

tl;dr: privacy problems, skype won't fix it, no solutions on the horizon 

Oh and all of them were trying to show their genitals or were asking for sex. GG Microsoft