2012-12-01

Higher speed of downloads of Skype client

Is the integration of MSN and Skype finally showing up in the number of Skype downloads, or is it the –according to Skype – massive download of Skype for iPhone and iPad? See their blog here:
Skype for iPhone and iPad Hits over 120 Million Downloads and Releases New Versions”.

In my opinion it is more the MSN-Skype merge. The download graph show clearly a bend around November 20, with download speeds as high as 5000 clients/minute, instead of the 2000 /minute at other moments!

2012-11-12

46 million people online

New million crossed: 46 million concurrent users online, thanks to Steve from Hawaii to warn me!

2012-11-10

Skype and MSN merge

Skype announced some days ago that it will integrate MSN and Skype. In fact, from what I understand, MSN will disappear and be swallowed by Skype. I would have expected an acceleration of downloads of the Skype client (and of users online), but to my surprise … nothing yet! See the graph below.
Why? Well, first, the migration to Skype is still not mandatory! Secondly, and this is a guess, some functionalities will be lost, and probably some MSN users are reluctant to move now, see the questions and answers here.

But there is hope! One of the questions is “Can I show up as offline to specific contacts?” and the answer is “You can’t yet hide from individual contacts.” The “yet” is revealing that they are working on it! This is an old “desire” of quite a lot of Skype users, read their forum!

2012-10-08

45 million people online

We reached 44 million concurrent Skype users online on September 17, but I was too busy and didn't blog.
Today my "warning mate Steve" from Hawaii warned me that we reached 45 million some minutes ago! Indeed!

More and more people are active on the internet, but there are also more and more people that are permanently connected through mobile devices (not my case yet)! I guess these are the two main reasons for the growth of Skype concurrent users online

2012-09-10

43 million

According to one of my blog readers, we reached 43 million concurrent users online today.

Thanks, Steve Schoen, from Hawai.

He said
"I think the surge in usage is somehow school-related".

 He is probably right!

2012-09-05

42 million people online

Skype is indeed still growing: 42 concurrent million people online! But, when will Microsoft allow Skype to publish some more numbers?
  • users per country?
  • minutes called per continent?
  • revenue per paying user?
  • total sales?

2012-05-18

Tip of the day: free screen sharing with Skype!

When you are in a video call and you want to share a screen you get the following message: "You need Skype Premium to share screens", and … you can have a free 7 days trial or buy Skype Premium at once. But, the following phrase made me curious: “Sharing screens on a video call or a group call is available as part of Skype Premium”. Implicitly, this means that when you are in a normal one to one Skype to Skype voice call WITHOUT VIDEO you still have free screen sharing. I tried it, here is the result …
No more pop up screen inviting you to pay for Skype Premium, and while calling the other person you still can see HIS (or HER) video! But he or she can’t see you. Therefore, screen sharing is still free! But Skype doesn’t tell you this in the pop-up screen, of course, business is business!
I tested this with version 5.9.0.114 for Windows.

2012-04-23

41 million people online!

Today, we reached more than 41.5 million concurrent users online.

Probably still related to the Skype for Windows Phone app, that went out of "beta", the new 1.0 version was released!

This is the most phenomenal growth period of the Skype history!

2012-04-10

Skype fast growth and Skype for Windows Phone app

It is very evident that we have the fastest period ever in Skype growth, after many months of stagnation, almost 300 days! (See also my post of December 26, Stuck @ 30 million). Thereafter we reached slowly the 31 million people online half January!

And then came the end of February with the release of the Skype for Windows Phone app …

In some weeks we went from 31 million concurrent people online to (yesterday Monday April 10, 2012) 40 million concurrent users online. Very interesting to note also that the 40 million milestone was reached on a day that was a Holiday in quite some countries. As my blog reader Raffaele D'Abrusco correctly noticed, usually there is a drop of concurrent users online when big countries have a Holiday! Well, to be honest, we had also some "record" days on a Sunday the last weeks, same reasoning … quite unusual if we compare with the past history!

And indeed, when we look at the download curve of Skype clients, we see clearly a bent in the download speed from the end of February on, exactly at the moment of the Skype for Windows Phone app release, see graph below!When will this stop? At the "Summer recession"?

2012-04-09

40 million people online today

Not much time to blog more today, but, yes, the growth of Skype users goes on!

2012-03-26

1 out of each 177 earth inhabitants online !

38 and 39 million people online today !

Quite amazing growth the last weeks. In less than one month Skype added 6 million concurrent people online! Never seen such a growth!
As Steve Schoen from Hawaii noticed, with a world population of 7,003,003,370 this means that 1 out of 177 people on this planet was running a Skype client on his computer or mobile device (with 39.5 million people online some minutes ago!). Of course, some are running more than one account at the same time, like I often do, but I guess this is a minority!

2012-03-12

And it goes on ... 37 million

37.545.575 users online some minutes ago, amazing growth!

In two weeks 5 million milestone crossings: never happened before! Last year, March 28, we were at 30 million, and then nothing for the rest of the year! I complained about it! And since January we added 7 millions!

Amazing, amazing!

2012-03-07

36 Million

Some minutes ago I saw (18:30 GMT) I saw 36.1 million people online on my Skype client ... NOT on the RSS Skype feed (35.871.682 there).

I was mentally too late for the screenshot, a pity!

Growth is going on ... :-)

2012-03-05

35 million WAW

And it goes fast the last two weeks:
Some minutes ago it was already 35.9 million concurrent users online according to my Skype client.

Download speed of the Skype clients is also quite high: 2500 downloads per minute, not the highest I have seen, but much higher than usual.

Therefore: 36 million concurrent users online today (then I will adapt my post) or tomorrow?

2012-02-27

33 AND 34 million the same day!

Skype hit 33 million concurrent users online today, and later on 34 million (around 18:15 GMT), only 4 days after the previous million milestone. This was fast, the fastest time of Skype history, see the table on the left, 3 million crossovers in 4 days, and two the same day!

One possible reason for this increased growth could be this:

Skype for Windows Phone App Released in Beta.

Amazing, because this Northern Hemisphere School Year was rather a deception until some weeks ago!

And thanks to Steve Schoen from Hawaii who warned me by e-mail about these two supplementary milestones!

Aloha :-)

2012-02-23

32 million

I saw for the first time 32 million simultaneous people online today, through the Skype RSS feed!

Was it the first time today? I am almost sure, but not completely, because my major and most favorite source, the Japanese site nyanyan.to doesn't show the online number graph anymore, and this is a pity!

2012-01-19

Skype calling minutes in 2011

Steve Ballmer from Skype (or is he from another company ;-) told the World that there were 300 billion minutes of Skype calls in 2011.
I added the data to my “historical” graph.

He doesn’t say however if it are only Skype-to-Skype calls like my graph suggests

He also speaks about 200 million people who used Skype in 2011. The last number is probably still an exaggeration compared to the actual real users (some people test Skype and never use it again) but a much better indication than the number of “user accounts” that Skype used to publicize in the past calling it “users”!

2012-01-16

Passed: 31 million milestone

Finally, after 294 days, Skype crossed again a “million milestone” of concurrent users online: 31 million today, and even 31.545.425 million some minutes ago (at 17:50 GMT*), data captured through the Skype RSS** feeds.

The 294 days waiting time, is the longest period ever between two million milestones, excluding the first million that took 418 days!

At least, some growth again!

*GMT: Greenwich Mean Time
**RSS: RDF Site Summary