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!