New Record: 12 million

Skype's count of concurrent online surpasses 12 million in a record 42 days.

To tell the truth, I hate to even publish this "record", because it is so misleading, but the press seems to think it's important, so let's toot the trumpet and declare that this is the fastest growth spurt that Skype has ever experienced. The record passed 11 million online on January 17th, and 42 days later it added another million concurrent users. If it had not been for Chinese New Year celebrations that suppressed Skype usage around the clock over the last two weeks, the new record would have come much sooner.

So why is it a misleading statistic? Because the record is a simplistic snapshot of Skype at a particular point in time and does not reflect usage over the course of a whole day, much less a whole week. Neither does it illustrate the trends in usage. For example, a year or two ago, we were seeing new records earlier in the day (at around 1700 GMT), when European and American users were at the end and the beginning of their respective business days. Now, when we hit a new high it is later in the day (at around 1900 GMT), and so we see that the relative Skype usage by Americans is growing relative to European usage. In other words, American usage of Skype dominates its ecosystem.

Loyal readers of this blog will of course know that there are several reasons for these trends. Come back another day for an update. Also, write to me if you have a theory that needs corroboration (or debunking).

Finally, remember that a better measurement of the Skype ecosystem is "Real Users", because it measures Skype through the whole day, and thereby offers us a worldwide and much more balanced perspective.