Skype co-founder backs a new messaging service called Wire

Backed by Skype co-founder Janus Friis and a team of tech veterans, the freshly launched Wire aims to be more than a regular chat service. It is a marriage of its competitors’ most popular features, including the ability to “ping” contacts. In an interview with The Guardian, Skype co-founder and Wire investor Janus Friis remarks, “What attracted me to Wire is that it is something truly new. This is not some marginal improvement. This is not just an app.” He then adds, “Skype was launched more than a decade ago. A lot has changed since then – we are all used to free calls and texting, and we have taken to carrying our computers in our pockets.” 

When Janus Friis co-founded Skype in 2003, its entrenched competition was instant messaging software like MSN Messenger, AIM and Yahoo Messenger. In 2015, he’s backing a new communications startup called Wire. Its entrenched competition? Skype. Well, not just Skype. Wire combines elements of Skype, WhatsApp and currently-buzzy workplace communications service Slack. It’s launching as a slick, fully-formed app for Mac, iOS and Android devices and a team of 65 people – not to mention the domain name wire.com and the Twitter handle @wire. Little details that show the company’s big ambitions, as does the financial backing from Friis. “What attracted me to Wire is that it is something truly new. This is not some marginal improvement. This is not just an app,” he told the Guardian, in a rare interview ahead of its launch. “This is not just attacking one feature trying to do something marginally better. What the team has done is a complete from-the-ground-up reimagination of what communication should be. I wouldn’t have been interested if this was just another feature.” Wire is an app, of course: Mac, iOS and Android initially, with an HTML5 version in development – “It will be ready in less than a quarter,” chief executive Jonathan Christensen told the Guardian – that will cover other devices, including Windows PCs.