In June we announced the first beta of Skype 4.0, a radical departure from any other version we’ve made before. Since then we’ve spent a lot of time reading and analysing your feedback and we’ve made a number of changes.

This video is recorded in HD - we recommend viewing it full screen (for those of you reading this in an RSS reader, you can watch the briefing video here - you can also grab the embed code if you want to use this video in your own blog)

First, I’d like to talk a little bit about the feedback itself. We had over 350,000 people trying out Beta 1. We had around 15,000 people giving us their comments through the Give feedback button directly in Skype; around 40,000 through surveys (both online and email) and about 700 comments on various blog posts.

Different types of user gave us very different feedback. For example, in the Skype forums, where some of our most experienced users hang out, we heard a lot more negativity, in particular around screen size. However, in our surveys we saw quite the opposite. When we collated all of the feedback together, we found that just over 70% of people who tried Beta 1 prefer using it to older versions of Skype.

We’re confident that this is quite reflective of the entire Skype user base. But 70% is not a number we’re happy with because we know that many of you out there would prefer a more familiar experience, and in particular an experience that allows you to work more easily whilst Skype is running in the background.

So, today, I’m very happy to announce Beta 2. It includes a number of changes, and most noticeably we’ve brought back contact groups – although we’ve renamed it contact categories to avoid confusion with group conversations. We’ve also done a lot of work on resizing and introduced a view which behaves very much like older versions: compact view. There are also major changes to alerts and notifications – it’s one of my favourite aspects of Beta 2. You’ll be glad to see numerous other changes and bugfixes have been introduced as well.

Take a quick look at the video below to give you a little preview of what you’re about to download, then go and give it a test drive yourself.

Download Beta 2

Again, we’d really like to hear your feedback on Beta 2, so don’t hesitate to let us know what you like, and what you don’t:

Give feedback on Beta 2

We’ll launch a third Beta towards the end of the year to address your comments on this version and also add a few other features – History being the most notable.

Thank you again for your feedback and your patience in waiting for this new version – I hope you enjoy using it.