2014-06-19

World Cup Football?

Yesterday Skype went over 80 million concurrent users online. Steven Schoen from Hawaii was wondering if the World Cup Football (wrongly called soccer in some countries ;-) could be an explanation. The World Cup begun on June 12, with Brazil playing against Croatia. My kids being half Brazilians I was happy for them with the score, but I have to admit that a draw could have been justified.

Back to Skype … I made a copy of the only “users online” evolution graph available for the time being through “Aaytch”:
And yes indeed, there seems to be a rise in Skype usage from that date on. Coincidence or cause and effect? Do people call each other more before, during and after the match? Do they stream the match through their webcam?

If it is a World Cup effect, we will see a Skype usage the final match, taking into account that during Northern Hemisphere summer there is usually a strong drop in Skype users online.

2014-06-18

Sudden jump to 79 million users online

On Monday Steven Schoen from Hawaii, one of my remaining “real” blog readers (I almost don’t post the last months!) warned me that « suddenly » the Skype concurrent users online reached 78,539,279 around 18h00 GMT. Yesterday I saw concurrent users online go above 79 million, also around 18h GMT.

Strange, because the last months there was a downward trend, from about 60 million at peak time in the beginning of the year, to about 56 million at peak time last week.

Why this sudden growth of the number, around 20 million more, one third more? Certainly not a sudden increase of the users, I don't believe this, probably some technical reason:

Probably Skype changed their algorithm to estimate the concurrent users online. But this is a guess!

Question: can we trust this number? I doubt about it, as does Steven!