1 billion downloads …

Today is the Birthday of my oldest son, 22 years. But also today, at about 9h17 GMT, Skype reached the phenomenal number of 1 billion downloads.

Congratulations Stefan and congratulations Skype !!!
Some comments about this number:

• This means about 2.8 downloads for each registered username;
• The current mean download speed is about 500 downloads/minute;
• In the past there were short periods where the mean download speed was much higher than 1500 / minute;
• The last two years the speed of downloads was mainly linear (see the light blue straight line);
• A download doesn’t necessarily mean a "new user", as “old users” also download Skype on “new or other computers” and when Skype releases “new client versions”;
• And last but not least, Skype belongs to the top ten most downloaded applications ever.

[EDITED]Hehe, Skype was also very aware of the 1 billion, because Josh Silverman blogged on it also some minutes after reaching that milestone, but I think I was first: I posted at 9h26 GMT, and he posted on 9h35 GMT! ;-)