It seems I was right: 70 million users online was "Outlook.com fake"!

Two weeks ago we jumped in less than 10 days from 60 million concurrent Skype users online to more than 70 million on August 27, very unusual, never happened before. And also not normal for the Northern Hemisphere Summer: usually no growth of users online at all during this period of the year. See the bottom of the screenshot of my “old Skype client”, taken on August 22, at 15h26 Belgian time (GMT+2): it shows 67 million people online.

Well, I follow Skype numbers since the very beginning of Skype’s birth in August 2003, and despite the very scarce information provided by the new owner Microsoft I developed a feeling concerning “normal or abnormal” changes in users online behavior. Therefore I dare to make some guesses. Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they prove to be right.

In my post of August 27 I guessed this was a “fake growth” due to Outlook.com users logging unknowingly on to the Skype application, or double logging in, and it seems I am right. Last week it never went over the 62 million people online, and also today, the maximum I saw was 62 million and a bit.

Such a downfall of about 8 million people online is NOT usual, never happened either. So, what happened?

• Did a lot of Skype users abandon Skype last week? I don’t think so!
• Did Skype change the way it calculates the users online?
• Or change something in the automatic logon of Outlook.com?

Probably something like the two last guesses.

Anyway, what matters, Skype usage is still growing, no doubt about that!

Nice to have readers !

Well, of course I blog hoping to have readers! Is this narcissism? Somehow yes ;-) One of my fanatic readers, Steve Schoen from Hawaii gave the link to the following chart. Not my chart! But yes, made by using my data. Thanks Statista! They mentioned it!

Not everybody is that fair! Nice graph by the way!

And, while I am busy with “myself”, The Guardian also commented on one of my last posts, see here. How long will I continue to blog? Well to be honest, I don’t know. Microsoft doesn’t provide separate numbers for the Skype business, not that I know at least. The only source now is the RSS feed of Skype Users Online. Even the Download Counter (on the same feed) has made some unexplainable strange jumps the last months and isn’t reliable anymore for that reason! And my blog is mainly about numbers … so, no numbers, no posts!