Are they (eBay) crazy?

Yesterday Amy-Mae Elliott wrote this: “Skype owner eBay removes JAJAH VoIP buttons”
She writes:
The email from eBay to sellers using JAJAH states: "The listing was removed because it violated the eBay Inappropriate Links policy ... links or other connections to live chat systems are not permitted."

Inappropriate decision indeed! Do they want to chase customers away?

This was an opportunity to promote Skype:

1. let customers choose for Jajah if they want
2. but make it more easy to place a Skype button!
3. and tell them why Skype is the best tool on the market!

But no ... they prefer to make customers angry! More on this stupidity here and here.

Skypers don’t love eBay?

Or is it the other way around?

Some days ago i posted the feelings of Stuart Henshal (USA) in my post “We once were advocates”.

Some more “old” feelings …

I came across a post of Chris Toohey, Pennsylvania, USA, with the title “It's Official: Ebay purchases Skype!” and date 12 September 2005:
“Not too sure where I stand on this. I love Skype, and the Paypal integration sounds interesting... but I can't help but feel like I'm going to get hit in the VOIP wallet and my favorite way to communicate with people around the world will suffer.”

Was this a premonition?

And then i found this comment on the blog FutureLawyer from Richard M. Georges (also USA) with the title “Windows Live Messenger” from June 22, 2006:
“I am still using Skype … Skype's acquisition by EBay has removed its patina of the little guy fighting the monster software company”.

Hmmm … Skype should do something about these feelings! And today they did: they laid off Niklas Zennström. Some blogs and news sites even pretend that "eBay should immediately sell what's left of Skype to ...". Perhaps that is a good idea!

So, is it: eBay doesn't love Skype?

[EDITED] See also the very interesting explanation of Janus Friis, the co-founder of Skype, thanks to my friend MuppetMaster on the Skype Forums!

6.6% of USA population?

I read the following statement of Peter Parkes, a Skype official blogger, on the Skype Blog:
"Skype reached its 20 millionth registered user in North America!"

As usual, let me correct this statement: they mean “registered user names”, not "registered users", and this isn't equal to "active users", see my explanation here in Skype Journal and on some of my previous posts!

Let us assume the numbers are however correct, this would mean that:

• 8 % of the active Worldwide Skypers are from the USA
• 6.6 % of the USA population are Skypers
• 10 % of the “active” population of the USA are Skypers (discounting people older than 65 years, and younger than 14 years)
• 8.6% of USA internet users are Skypers (not 10% like stated on the Skype blog!)

Bear in mind that the second, third and fourth numbers above are very exaggerated, and you can read why there are less active users than registered user names in my "Japanese blogpost"! I would like to add one reason to these:

• Spammers also register multiple usernames to "attack" their victims
  

So, like always, this 20 million users statement is marketing exaggeration!

Respect my choice!

Today i received for two of my Skype spare user accounts an e-mail from Skype! I was shocked! I got both in French! My language account settings were for both accounts in English.

- What if i don’t speak French?
- What if i belong to the Dutch speaking community (60% of the country)?
- What if i belong to the small minority German speaking community?
- What if i belong to the many foreigners living in the country (immigrants from Morocco, Turkey, etc.), and more particularly in Brussels (European Community employees, and others)?

This is a complete lack of respect for the cultural identity of the inhabitants of my country! And i guess they made as usual the same mistake in other countries (Switzerland, etc.)!

And it isn’t the first time they make that stupid mistake! I blogged about it on Skype Journal in the past in “Is Skype forgetting its Customers?”, and there were also some complaints on the Skype Forum about it in the past!

Won’t they learn from their mistakes? I regret to say, but this lack of respect for the customer is something that happened often since they were Ebayed! Shame! (Yes i am angry!)

Skype VoIP ranking

I found through the “VOIP IP Telephony” blog the “VoIP Ranking by Subscriber: Q2 2007”.

Skype is in fourth position, but the data of paying SkypeOut customers is from July 2005! This was just before Ebay swallowed Skype! There were 1.8 million paying customers, according to Skype. No information anymore on this number since then.

End of June 2005 there were a maximum of 3.2 million concurrent Skype users online. End of June 2007 we had a maximum of 9.5 million concurrent users online. This is about 3 (three) times more.

Therefore we could conclude that the number of paying SkypeOut (and other calling plans) customers has also tripled.

With this assumption the ranking table looks as follows:And therefore number one again!

Skype website popularity

How can an outsider like me try to have some indications about the speed of the growth of Skype?

Some numbers are publicly available, like:

• Number of download (Skype RSS feeds)
• Number of concurrent users online (Skype Client and RSS feeds)
• Revenue (Ebay quarterly results)
• Registered usernames (Ebay quarterly results)
• Number of Skype purchase orders (sequential purchase order number on your Skype account page)
• Number of Skype Forum users (Skype Forum)
• Minutes served (Ebay quarterly results)

And sometimes Skype independent data, like the one i want to show today:

• Website visits (Alexa Web Traffic)

This graph shows the ranking of the Skype website visits compared to other websites. Until the end of 2005, there was a clear increase in the ranking position. From 2006 on the popularity of the Skype website has gone down. Is this also an indication of the slower growth of Skype? I would guess so!

The blue arrow points to a sudden website popularity increase in August 2007, but this was due to the “unpopular” Skype outage.

Download counter repaired

Some days ago (two posts earlier) i explained that in my opinion the download counter of Skype was flawed.

Today, everything went back to normal with an “artificial and sudden jump” of 4 million downloads in a fraction of a second (see the blue curve on the graph!).

This indeed proves that there was some error in the counting system.

But again, why did this error start exactly on “Worm Day”?

We once were advocates :-(

I just came across a blog post of Stuart Henshall. Stuart Henshall is the guy who launched Skype Journal years ago!

He posted a long comment just after the Skype Outage, and was as many others quite unhappy with the crisis communication of Skype. But his feelings are deeper, some extracts here.

"… their Brand has evolved from being community led around sharing to something corporate and out of tune with those that once loved Skype but now just use it.

The outage just confirms once again that "Skype's" crisis management and handling of communications is poor; as it has been since eBay took control. In the end Skype has damaged its reputation because they failed to act in a transparent manner and continue to act a wee bit too secretly. We will continue to use the service yes. Does it make me feel warmer about Skype no ...
…
I'm convinced (and needed no real convincing) that Skype's network works.
…
Skype has become a faceless corporation and we're just "users" where once we were advocates, storytellers, testers and happy Skypers. Today we are "Everyone" and Users. I'm sorry, I'm still a Skyper and I Skype."

That is almost exactly how i feel!

Read the whole story here: Outing Skype Communications

Download counter flawed?

I noticed that the downloads of the Skype client fell down to almost zero. Well, at least if i believe the numbers of the Skype RSS Feed (see the link on the left of my blog).

This is also visible from the blue download curve in the graph from nyanyan.to. (They also use the data of the Skype RSS feed).
Since September 10, it seems that the Skype client has been downloaded only 2000 times, compared to 2 million times in a normal period of 4 days! But i don’t believe this: i saw quite a lot of people on the Skype Forum with questions or problems concerning their newly installed Skype software, and i downloaded it myself 5 times (just to test) without any problems.

The only weird thing: the RSS feeds provides “false” data since the very same day Skype announced its Skype worm! Strange … related or not, and why?

Skype Worm !!!!!!!!!

DON’T CLICK ON THE LINK!

Today i got a strange message from a known Skyper (NOT a spammer!) with whom i only chatted once one year ago:

X says:

• hey
• your photos looks realy nice
• :D
• haha lol
• http://www.[some name].org/erotic-gallerys/[some code]/dsc027.jpg
• this (happy) sexy one
• :)

It is a worm, and Skype warns its customers in the post “On the worm that affects Skype for Windows users”.

You can find a somewhat technical description at Trend Micro .

Spammers and Skype accounts

Skype is continuing to abusively “market” the number of registered users! You can find this phrase on their website: “over 220 million people from almost every corner of the globe have registered” . As i explained several times, and the last time here in “6% Japanese are Skypers” this is false.

But today i found an interesting comment from “Jim” on the Skype Forum concerning Skype SPAM:
"A Skype search reveals a list of 42 user names. 42 people using the same e-mail, or 1 spammer with 42 names? The choice is yours!"

I did a fast search on some of my Skype spammers (in my history tab) and i found 7 spammers. Including the one from Jim this gives 8 spammers totalling 173 usernames!
(Jim’s spammer had now already 51 usernames!)

So … i advice Skype to change its marketing phrase: “we measure our success by the growing amount of Spammers registering usernames”

Brazil off today

On Friday we always can notice a lower number of users online. Usually, compared to the day before (Thursday) concurrent users online go down by about 4.5 %. And it goes even lower on Saturday and Sunday. For some (Muslim) countries weekend begins on Friday, and for a lot of other countries it starts on Saturday. A lot of Skypers leave their computers to do other things on weekend.

But today, Friday September 7, 2007, the concurrent users online went down by 8.2 % compared to yesterday! Why?
It was Independence Day in Brazil, and my “Samba, Futebol and Carnaval” friends prefer to be on the beaches. Brazil has quite a lot of Skype users!

Could i conclude (from the numbers above) that 3.7 % of Skype Users are Brazilians?

Summer recession finished!

Today i noticed we are definitely out of the summer recession period. Indeed i saw we reached 9575334 concurrent users online, slightly higher than my highest recorded number some months ago. Is this summer recession new? No, i already explained it in the past in “Holidays are bad”, but there is something deceptive about the Today, September 4 …
The graph shows:

1. Summer recession 2005
2. Christmas – New Year 2005-2006
3. Summer recession 2006
4. Christmas – New Year 2006-2007
5. Summer recession 2007

But, the last two years i always saw the new “all times high number” around August 20. We are therefore 2 weeks late with recovering from the summer disease! Is Skype getting old?

Skype Pro Fraud

Quite a lot of people complain (on the Skype Forum) about the fact that calls to national landlines are charged, even after subscribing to SkypePro.
People should read the small text on the bottom of the page:
When you click on it, you find the very limited list of countries where it is valid (click on the image).

It is a very nasty trick from nasty companies to place very essential information on another webpage! I still do believe Skype is a friendly company!

Therefore i would like to suggest to Skype to adapt their webpage in the following way:
This isn’t difficult! And this would be honest customer information!

4th Birthday 4 Skype

Today is the 4th birthday of Skype.

It is somewhat a disappointment: last year, at the same date we reached also a milestone of 7.000.000 concurrent users online, see my Birthday post.
Today we didn't even go over the 9.6 million concurrent users online, the former highest number ever reached some months ago. This clearly demonstrates the slower growth.

Slower doesn't mean "no growth"! There is growth, and i guess we will reach 10 million concurrent users online somewhere in September, much later than i would have expected 6 months ago.
Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SKYPE! It is still my favorite P2P application!

About the Nyanyan graphs

My favorite Skype "concurrent users online graph" can be found on http://nyanyan.to/skype/40hr_chart.php. The graph below is from August 2005.

The Japanese author of the graph made a short explanation (in English) on his blog (click here).

He tells us he has two sources:

• the Skype RSS feed (see a link on the right side of my blog)
  
• the Skype client "people online" information

I am grateful he is providing his graphs. Thanks a lot!

6% Japanese are Skypers?

I read the following statement of Shinichi Iwata, general manager of Skype's Japanese office, on www.skype-news.com:

The number of registered users in Japan totaled 5.7 million at the end of July.

As usual, let me correct this statement: they mean “registered user names”, not "registered users", and this isn't equal to "active users", see my explanation here in Skype Journal!

Let us assume the numbers are however correct, this would mean that:

• 2.5 % of the active Worldwide Skypers are Japanese
• 6 % of the Japanese population are Skypers
• 10 % of the “active” Japanese population are Skypers (discounting people older than 65 years, and younger than 14 years)

Bear in mind that the second and third numbers above are very exaggerated, and i repeat why there are less active users than registered user names:

• lost password, and therefore inaccessible user name, therefore the need to create a new user name
  
• testing Skype, and abandoned use of the user name
• spare user names, registered for alternative or future use (i have several!)
• the owner of the user name died (yes, this also happens!)
• the person switched to another VoIP tool
• the person registered a temporary name for a temporary past situation

Question to Shinichi Iwata: how many user names did you register?

Outage & Forum

Of course, not surprising …During the outage of Skype some days ago, quite a lot of people registered on the Skype Forum to find the answer to their “common” problem (not everybody reads blogs of course!).

While the last months about 300 new Forum users were registered every day, it rose to almost 1500 new Forum users on August 17.

That is good! Most people who try to find a solution to their problem on the Skype Forum want of course to continue to use Skype!

Nodes and Supernodes

There is a very nice picture and explanation about "nodes and supernodes" and why the Skype outage, found on the blog of Mike McGrath! Click on the picture below to go to the post ...
However, i think the picture is oversimplified: i thought ordinary hosts also could have direct links with each other, even when not in a call, therefore transferring a small part of the "sound/data" packages of other people.

Shut Up!

I repeat what i said yesterday: i think the explanation after the outage was quite OK. And they provided some more clarifications today!

But, why did Skype communicate so badly during the crisis? Almost no concrete information, apart from the usual “we are doing all we can”, and “it isn’t a hacker”! Niklas Zennström … who is this? Never heard of him … during the outage hurricane!

Some Skype Beta Testers have a blog, and don’t hide they are Beta Testers: not any one of them commented on the outage! Not a word. Not even after the recovery! Very unusual! The only comment was from Tamas Henning “Nope! Sorry guys, there is nothing here”. But wander with your mouse over the link here, it says: “Overwhelmed or the inevitable has finally come?”. Another Beta Tester posted something, then removed it! I was however too late to read it!

Were they told to “shut up”? Probably, but this looks like good old style communist or dictatorial practices!

Jaanus Kase, the former main blogger and communication man of Skype, commented however, and he showed clearly his disagreement with the Skype communication policy DURING the outage: the right thing to do would be to have an ongoing public incident report and debriefing of what’s going on. … Skype should do (this) if it still wants to be an open friendly company!

We can’t say Skype didn’t communicate at all of course! Villu Arak and some others kept the public informed, but in a very cleaned up language.

I think that next time they should improve their crisis communication!

[EDITED] Tamas Henning made a comment on his blog, after this post!