With his introduction of Skype, an application for video chat, Niklas Zennstrom redesigned the scope of communication, and took it to a whole new level.
This is however, just one of the many reasons why Zennstrom remains a legend in the world of information technology.
Born on February 16th, 1966 in Sweden Niklas Zennstrom stood out as an innovative kid since childhood.
Zennstrom started his professional career in 1991 at Tele2, a Swedish telecommunications firm. In 2000, he founded Kazaa along with Janus Friis. It was a high profile second-generation, peer-to-peer file-sharing application, similar to Napster. Following a series of legal cases, Kazaa was shut down in 2001.
The closure of Kazaa, however, did not stop Zennstrom and Friis, and soon, in 2003 they introduced Skype. It is an application that provides video chat and voice call services. It made communication, especially long-distance ones easier, enabling free international calls through the Internet. By 2005, the service had more than 50 million users, particularly in Asia and Europe. On 10th May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype.