Advertising Comes to Skype

Skype is a wonderful free (for most purposes) service that teachers are using to connect classrooms across the globe. I'm planning to use it to connect my Global Studies class with another for the purpose of expanding our classroom conversation beyond the just the eight of us in the room. If you're currently using Skype in your classroom, you should be aware that they are going to start inserting some advertising into the home tab in Skype for Windows. Skype says that they won't be using pop-ups or interrupting calls with advertising. You can read the full announcement from Skype here. Here's what the advertising will look like.

Update: Just to clarify, I don't begrudge Skype for making this move. They have bills to pay just like the rest of us. I'd rather see them raise revenue this way than move to a completely fee-based model. I posted this information just so readers who use Skype in their classrooms wouldn't be surprised if they see advertising appear.


H/T to Read Write Web.