Comment by gregdoesit

I think it was denial that messaging itself would be more inportant then video calling.

Skype got massive because of video (and audio) calls. That was our main differentiator, and what helped us grow. P2P really excelled there.

Messaging was built as almost an afterthought and supporting feature, piggybacking on whatever infrastructure we already had in place.

And of course it didn't help that there was no one person or team in charge of the user experience who would call out that we have far inferior messaging experience then... any of our competitors, really.

Even when we did - and aquired GroupMe to do something about it - we then still had the false sense of security and not needing to hurry, because user numbers were still growing upwards. And when they slowed down, it was too late.