USA grows faster!

Hudson Barton likes to chat with me about the growth of Skype. I mentioned some weeks ago a slowdown of the growth of users online.

He tried to refute it, and made some own analysis of the data.

He began to register data concerning concurrent users online on October 7, till the end of last week. Here follows his explanation:

• Current # = Average of three measurements in past week (Sunday and two "normal" weekdays)
• Growth # = Average of weekly growth for past 3 weeks (difference between weeks at same hour of same day)
• Growth % = ratio of initial average and the growth.

The red row is my “peak time registration” of the same weeks as those of Hudson’s data (in the meantime peak has reached a maximum of more then 7.9 million).

The numbers are “proxies” for geographical areas, and not measurements of the users in each area.

His calculation is based on the fact that Skype is used mainly by Business users, and that they have their computers (with Skype) on at the following hours, and business users of the other regions have switched it off at the same moments:

• Americas = 19 or 20 GMT
• Europe = 11 or 12 GMT
• Asia = 2 or 3 GMT

Obviously, there is some group (in all continents) that leaves their computers on all the time, and there are also quite a lot of non-business users.

But, the interesting fact is, that the numbers seem to show that the America’s (therefore probably the USA) is growing faster than the other regions: 3.26%.

Hudson says: Because these three continents are separated by 8 hours, these numbers are proxies for the growth of business Skypers, but not necessarily for the growth of non-business Skypers. He could be right: non-business users use their computers more outside business hours.