This post is an answer to my last guess in the previous post ...In the past, Skype forum member names mostly looked like the ones shown on the right. Names therefore were MuppetMaster, MadRaven (the guy who stopped waiting for the video feature ;-), Rocketman, etc. Quite a lot of these forum names were exactly the same as the Skype Username of the person registering.
Ooh yes, sometimes you had somebody using a real name like "Kevin Delaney", "Bill Campbell" or "Jean Mercier". But this was a real minority as you can guess from the picture.
And something else: about 40% (rough estimate) of the forum users have posted at least once!
Then, for instance on June 26, about 750 "human names" were registered, instead of the 200 daily new forum users of the past weeks. All have "zero" posts.
Quite a lot of these names (see also the screenshot of my previous post) are somehow familiar! Some examples: "Bjarne Mussolini", "Lloyd Arafat" and his relative "Yasser Nicoll", "Hillary Simon", "Menachem Lennon", "Menachem Kundera", "Antoinette Nabokov", "Indira Warren", "Nigel Tolstoy", "Shintaro Shankar", "David Nixon", "Napoleon Marconi", "Alp Goering" and his friend "Clint Hitler" and their common enemies "Jonah Lenin" and "Tory Trotsky".
I could go on hours like this. It was a funny list to see (for me at least). I again believe somebody made a script to create, from a list of "known names and surnames" a new random list of "mixed names and surnames" and he registered as many new forum users as he could.
This could explain why Skype now only accepts new Forum Users with the Skype account name and password! This way it is more difficult to create a script.
Although, i wonder ... somebody i know pretends he created a script that could allow him to create in an automated way new Skype usernames! In that case it would be possible to run two scripts one after each other: one creating the Skype username, and the second one logging in on the Skype forum with the same name!
?????
EDITED 2006/08/27: An answer to my questions here Jaanus on the internet
2 comments:
Hi Jean Mercier,
I am looking for some stats about skype and my good friend Ike said i must rather ask you as you are the best when it comes to this info..
I am looking for stats that shows how many skype users are registered in South Africa, and the rest of africa..
If you can help, please pass this info to ike and she will forward it to me.. Thanx, also for a good site.
regards
Simon
Simon,
you can find some information here: http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=408348
(Please copy in your browser, i can not put the link in the comments).
And for South-Africa, according to the same data mentioned in this link (in October 2005) at least 0.05% of the population was using Skype, from which 80% men, and 20% women. Mean age was 36 years old!
South-Africa was therefore in World Ranking in position 72 when compared to its population, and in position 41 in global number of users.
Post a Comment