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Hudson Barton: 2008-08-14 03:18:11: My response:

I am "The Borderless Communicator" (http://glimfeather.com/index.html), and you sir have unfortunately gotten it wrong again.   While it is true that Skype's count of "registered users" is terribly misleading, it is not untruthful and I do not believe it is misleading through intent. It simply is the only hard number that Skype has, so that's what they report.

My count of "real users" is a better measure of Skype usage but it is not a more honest measure. The fact is that it is a statistical calculation and not a hard number.    The chief advantage of the "real user" estimate over other estimates is that it is not arbitrary in terms of methodology or analysis.   It measures how well Skype is actually growing its business, and thereby goes beyond your noisy rhetoric about "throwaway users."

"Real Users" is growing at a very fast rate, somewhat faster than the Internet as a whole, so it is your effort to diminish that record that is less than honest.   The other favorable statistic for Skype is that its revenue per real user is growing rapidly.   The combination of those two rates reveals a company that has few peers anywhere on the Internet and zero peers among companies that participate in VOIP and IM spaces.

That being said, Skype's churn rate is rising. Its growth may someday turn negative (relative to its peers) if it is unable to participate fully in mobile markets, and unable to realize its potential in social networking.   My own view is that Skype is running out of time with respect to these challenges. It needs to succeed in both areas. Right now it's succeeding in neither. I'm a realist.

You are not a realist. Two of your mistakes are that you refuse to understand Skype's superior technology and its overwhelming lead over its competition.   Your worst mistake however is that you endlessly demean the integrity of Skype's leadership.
Hudson Barton: 2008-08-14 03:17:53: I just responded to J. A. Watson's latest Skype rant. It won't do any good, but it makes me feel better. See http://community.zdnet.co.uk/…/0,1000000567,10008987o-2000498448b&hellip
Roy +886-911200388: 2008-07-28 03:52:52: please carry on, but I do read the content here from time to time.
Phil Wolff | Skype Journal | Oakland, California: 2008-07-28 03:51:55: no problem.
Larry: 2008-07-28 03:51:08: ok
Roy +886-911200388: 2008-07-28 03:50:55: sorry, pressed the wrong button .. we are having a typhone here!
Phil Wolff | Skype Journal | Oakland, California: 2008-07-28 03:50:22: whoops. sorry i missed it
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-25 15:13:44: Making Security Easier... http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/…/making-security-easier.html
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-23 15:32:44: Several survey-type studies of Skype have been done, but they all have demographic holes owing to the fact that Skype is worldwide. There are studies for individual countries at differing times, with differing standards of measurement, and with differing ways of measuring. I don't think anybody can make sense of such numbers.
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-23 15:25:32: Besides, even if we did want to measure actual bodies according to some arbitrary standard, there is no way to do it. Concurrent Users Online is the only measuring device we have.
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-23 13:20:44: If you think about it, there is an implication in my formula that the average "real user" is in the cloud for 8 hours per day... but that the minimum and maximum can range from 1 second up to 24 hours. In other words, the term "real user" includes the usage of all users, not just those over a certain threshhold per week or per month. Defining a "real user" with a threshold is arbitrary.

Someday, when every Skype user is online 24/7 (because they will regard it as their primary communications tool), the "real user" count will appear to have gone up three fold, but if you use a threshhold system, you will fail to see that usage has tripled even as technically your head count will be far more accurate.

I would be willing to use a different multiplier (other than 1x the sum of the three peaks), but it would not shed much light on things if the objective is to measure USAGE as opposed to bodies.
Julian Bond: 2008-07-23 09:43:56: The 7 day figure is the best indicator of actual usage. If you only log in once a month, you're not really a user although it does cover people who are on holiday.
Julian Bond: 2008-07-23 09:43:06: What I'd be more interested in is logged in during last 7 days or last month. But I guess only Skype have those.
Phil Wolff | Skype Journal | Oakland, California: 2008-07-22 20:49:18: I'd inflate that number further to account for shorter connection times. First, there is a very large subset of Skype users that use internet cafes, school computer labs, on the go laptops, and other transient setups. In China, Skype's largest market, it's estimated there are more than 300 million people using internet cafes as their primary access point. They won't be online for a whole day, maybe only for 20 minutes to a few hours. Each person will contribute only a fraction to the peak numbers. But I'd consider them to be real users. To estimate you'd want to apply a frequency distribution of number of people who use different connection times against peak times to create a multiplier. e.g. if we have 10 million online and 10 percent are connected for 12 hours, a new peak would be 9 million + (1 million /(12/24)) or 11 million. My pulling-it-out-of-the-air estimate is multiplying peak numbers by 3-to-5 times.
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-22 18:59:22: Yeah. That's the formula precisely (12+12+8=32); a quick & dirty estimate. I believe devoutly in a three-region analysis. Call me a trinitarian.

In theory you can get more precise if you do more than my 9 readings per day, analyzing every bump and dip (Skype measures the size of its cloud every 15 minutes). Such an analysis (96 readings per day maximum) is very helpful toward understanding the underlying forces at work. I have done it several times. You are right that the regions are not totally distinct . Rather, they are three intersecting bell curves.
Phil Wolff | Skype Journal | Oakland, California: 2008-07-22 17:58:36: so if i understand it, you are adding the timezone peaks, assuming that each is a different population. e.g. 12+20+4 = ~36 million real?
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-22 11:19:59: The components of "real user" are:
1. historic peak at GMT 10-12 (Europe, Africa)
2. historic peak at GMT 18-20 (Americas)
3. historic peak at GMT 2-4 (Asia,Pacific)

In theory, I could tell you how many "real users" logged in on a particular day or week or month . Lots of noise and uncertainty in that statistic, but the real problem is that I don't have consistent data over time so as to make it meaningful.

In addition to "real users", I keep track of peaks and valleys by individual region and by weekday. This gives me a good sense, for example, of where the users are and whether they are in the cloud for pleasure (weekends) or purpose (weekdays), etc.
Julian Bond: 2008-07-22 08:04:39: Are there figures for logged in during last 7 days or last month?
Julian Bond: 2008-07-22 08:03:50: Please define "real user"
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-21 12:59:41: Proof that Skype is struggling. http://glimfeather.com/…/30023870.html
Phil Wolff | Skype Journal | Oakland, California: 2008-07-17 15:47:00: a real user is...
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-17 12:02:48: Somebody said to me the other day that he thinks there are 50 million real skype users, not 32 million. It turned out he had no measurable definition for "real" user, so his point was meaningless. I'm not saying there can't be other definitions, but I am saying that my definition leads to a measure of actual usage, is consistent over three whole years, and generally fits with other impirical measurements inferred from surveys. It also reveals some of the details of Skype demographics.... nuances of where users live and when they use skype.

Skype's "registered users" says something about Skype's future (potential) user base, but not its current user base. Skype won't truly be successful until the growth rate of "real" users begins to outpace the growth rate of registered users.... converting the potential into the real. Over the past year, registered users have grown 54% while real users have grown just 35%. That is a lot of slippage.
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 21:51:54: Skype Quarterly Results and Analysis

Registered Users: 338,000,000 (2nd quarter)
Revenue: $136,000,000 (2nd quarter)
Real Users:   32,225,437 (2nd quarter)
Revenue per real user: $4.22 (2nd quarter)

Growth in Revenue: 51% Year/Year
Growth in Revenue per Real User:   12.29% Year/Year
Other: Skype claims profit margins that are "double digit"

My Summary Analysis:
51% annual revenue growth combined with 12% margin growth is good news for Skype.

My Forecast:
Accelerating margin growth.    Similar revenue growth to the record 2006 year.
DaHoff™: 2008-07-16 20:51:43: (heidy)
DaHoff™: 2008-07-16 20:51:40: hallo
DaHoff™: 2008-07-16 20:51:38: help
DaHoff™: 2008-07-16 20:51:36: hmm
Jim Courtney: 2008-07-16 16:42:42: Test message re using twitter4skype in this chat.
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 16:32:50
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 13:16:48: Aside: During the fall and winter, Mondays usually show more people using Skype concurrently than other days of the week, but in the spring and summer, the peak moves to Tuesday and Wednesday.

Also, during the fall and winter the daily peaks of Skype usage generally correspond to the workday in the Americas, but in the spring and summer it corresponds more precisely to the workday in Europe. I'm guessing that this reflects a habit in the Americas (the USA mostly) to take vacations whose duration can be measured in hours as opposed to days or weeks or months.
Phil Wolff | Skype Journal | Oakland, California: 2008-07-16 13:03:52: do long weekends count?
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 12:30:54: Besides, with the cost of transportation being what it is, who can afford to leave home?
Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 12:25:22: Does anyone take vacations these days?

Officially, our days of leisure in modern society continue to expand; fewer work hours per day, fewer work days per week, longer vacations, etc.

On the other hand, sometime in the distant past people were expected to work 8 hours per day.   Now that's the exception.   As business globalizes, we must be available close to 16 hours per day in order to communicate with colleagues on the other side of the planet, or on weekends and national holidays because they are not consistent from country to country and culture to culture.

Also, when we're on holiday our associates can reach us because our contact points are not location specific (a mailing address or a landline). Email, cell phone, and Skype follow us wherever we go.

So the question is: Does anyone take a real vacation anymore?   Today, a vacation means changing your routine somewhat, but it does not mean total avoidance of business as it did in the past.    The persistence (stickiness) of conversation means that you cannot become totally unglued.
Cyber Kinetic IP: 2008-07-13 17:18:51: test

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Go to bottom (older postings) The Skype Conversation Hudson Barton: 2008-08-14 03:18:11 My response: I am "The Borderless Communicator" (http://glimfeather.com/index.html), and you sir have unfortunately gotten it wrong again. While it is true that Skype's count of "registered users" is terribly misleading, it is not untruthful and I do not believe it is misleading through intent. It simply is the only hard number that Skype has, so that's what they report. My count of "real users" is a better measure of Skype usage but it is not a more honest measure. The fact is that it is a statistical calculation and not a hard number. The chief advantage of the "real user" estimate over other estimates is that it is not arbitrary in terms of methodology or analysis. It measures how well Skype is actually growing its business, and thereby goes beyond your noisy rhetoric about "throwaway users." "Real Users" is growing at a very fast rate, somewhat faster than the Internet as a whole, so it is your effort to diminish that record that is less than honest. The other favorable statistic for Skype is that its revenue per real user is growing rapidly. The combination of those two rates reveals a company that has few peers anywhere on the Internet and zero peers among companies that participate in VOIP and IM spaces. That being said, Skype's churn rate is rising. Its growth may someday turn negative (relative to its peers) if it is unable to participate fully in mobile markets, and unable to realize its potential in social networking. My own view is that Skype is running out of time with respect to these challenges. It needs to succeed in both areas. Right now it's succeeding in neither. I'm a realist. You are not a realist. Two of your mistakes are that you refuse to understand Skype's superior technology and its overwhelming lead over its competition. Your worst mistake however is that you endlessly demean the integrity of Skype's leadership. Hudson Barton: 2008-08-14 03:17:53 I just responded to J. A. Watson's latest Skype rant. It won't do any good, but it makes me feel better. See http://community.zdnet.co.uk/…/0,1000000567,10008987o-2000498448b&hellip Roy +886-911200388: 2008-07-28 03:52:52 please carry on, but I do read the content here from time to time. Phil Wolff \| Skype Journal \| Oakland, California: 2008-07-28 03:51:55 no problem. Larry: 2008-07-28 03:51:08 ok Roy +886-911200388: 2008-07-28 03:50:55 sorry, pressed the wrong button .. we are having a typhone here! Phil Wolff \| Skype Journal \| Oakland, California: 2008-07-28 03:50:22 whoops. sorry i missed it Hudson Barton: 2008-07-25 15:13:44 Making Security Easier... http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/…/making-security-easier.html Hudson Barton: 2008-07-23 15:32:44 Several survey-type studies of Skype have been done, but they all have demographic holes owing to the fact that Skype is worldwide. There are studies for individual countries at differing times, with differing standards of measurement, and with differing ways of measuring. I don't think anybody can make sense of such numbers. Hudson Barton: 2008-07-23 15:25:32 Besides, even if we did want to measure actual bodies according to some arbitrary standard, there is no way to do it. Concurrent Users Online is the only measuring device we have. Hudson Barton: 2008-07-23 13:20:44 If you think about it, there is an implication in my formula that the average "real user" is in the cloud for 8 hours per day... but that the minimum and maximum can range from 1 second up to 24 hours. In other words, the term "real user" includes the usage of all users, not just those over a certain threshhold per week or per month. Defining a "real user" with a threshold is arbitrary. Someday, when every Skype user is online 24/7 (because they will regard it as their primary communications tool), the "real user" count will appear to have gone up three fold, but if you use a threshhold system, you will fail to see that usage has tripled even as technically your head count will be far more accurate. I would be willing to use a different multiplier (other than 1x the sum of the three peaks), but it would not shed much light on things if the objective is to measure USAGE as opposed to bodies. Julian Bond: 2008-07-23 09:43:56 The 7 day figure is the best indicator of actual usage. If you only log in once a month, you're not really a user although it does cover people who are on holiday. Julian Bond: 2008-07-23 09:43:06 What I'd be more interested in is logged in during last 7 days or last month. But I guess only Skype have those. Phil Wolff \| Skype Journal \| Oakland, California: 2008-07-22 20:49:18 I'd inflate that number further to account for shorter connection times. First, there is a very large subset of Skype users that use internet cafes, school computer labs, on the go laptops, and other transient setups. In China, Skype's largest market, it's estimated there are more than 300 million people using internet cafes as their primary access point. They won't be online for a whole day, maybe only for 20 minutes to a few hours. Each person will contribute only a fraction to the peak numbers. But I'd consider them to be real users. To estimate you'd want to apply a frequency distribution of number of people who use different connection times against peak times to create a multiplier. e.g. if we have 10 million online and 10 percent are connected for 12 hours, a new peak would be 9 million + (1 million /(12/24)) or 11 million. My pulling-it-out-of-the-air estimate is multiplying peak numbers by 3-to-5 times. Hudson Barton: 2008-07-22 18:59:22 Yeah. That's the formula precisely (12+12+8=32); a quick & dirty estimate. I believe devoutly in a three-region analysis. Call me a trinitarian. In theory you can get more precise if you do more than my 9 readings per day, analyzing every bump and dip (Skype measures the size of its cloud every 15 minutes). Such an analysis (96 readings per day maximum) is very helpful toward understanding the underlying forces at work. I have done it several times. You are right that the regions are not totally distinct . Rather, they are three intersecting bell curves. Phil Wolff \| Skype Journal \| Oakland, California: 2008-07-22 17:58:36 so if i understand it, you are adding the timezone peaks, assuming that each is a different population. e.g. 12+20+4 = ~36 million real? Hudson Barton: 2008-07-22 11:19:59 The components of "real user" are: 1. historic peak at GMT 10-12 (Europe, Africa) 2. historic peak at GMT 18-20 (Americas) 3. historic peak at GMT 2-4 (Asia,Pacific) In theory, I could tell you how many "real users" logged in on a particular day or week or month . Lots of noise and uncertainty in that statistic, but the real problem is that I don't have consistent data over time so as to make it meaningful. In addition to "real users", I keep track of peaks and valleys by individual region and by weekday. This gives me a good sense, for example, of where the users are and whether they are in the cloud for pleasure (weekends) or purpose (weekdays), etc. Julian Bond: 2008-07-22 08:04:39 Are there figures for logged in during last 7 days or last month? Julian Bond: 2008-07-22 08:03:50 Please define "real user" Hudson Barton: 2008-07-21 12:59:41 Proof that Skype is struggling. http://glimfeather.com/…/30023870.html Phil Wolff \| Skype Journal \| Oakland, California: 2008-07-17 15:47:00 a real user is... Hudson Barton: 2008-07-17 12:02:48 Somebody said to me the other day that he thinks there are 50 million real skype users, not 32 million. It turned out he had no measurable definition for "real" user, so his point was meaningless. I'm not saying there can't be other definitions, but I am saying that my definition leads to a measure of actual usage, is consistent over three whole years, and generally fits with other impirical measurements inferred from surveys. It also reveals some of the details of Skype demographics.... nuances of where users live and when they use skype. Skype's "registered users" says something about Skype's future (potential) user base, but not its current user base. Skype won't truly be successful until the growth rate of "real" users begins to outpace the growth rate of registered users.... converting the potential into the real. Over the past year, registered users have grown 54% while real users have grown just 35%. That is a lot of slippage. Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 21:51:54 Skype Quarterly Results and Analysis Registered Users: 338,000,000 (2nd quarter) Revenue: $136,000,000 (2nd quarter) Real Users: 32,225,437 (2nd quarter) Revenue per real user: $4.22 (2nd quarter) Growth in Revenue: 51% Year/Year Growth in Revenue per Real User: 12.29% Year/Year Other: Skype claims profit margins that are "double digit" My Summary Analysis: 51% annual revenue growth combined with 12% margin growth is good news for Skype. My Forecast: Accelerating margin growth. Similar revenue growth to the record 2006 year. DaHoff™: 2008-07-16 20:51:43 (heidy) DaHoff™: 2008-07-16 20:51:40 hallo DaHoff™: 2008-07-16 20:51:38 help DaHoff™: 2008-07-16 20:51:36 hmm Jim Courtney: 2008-07-16 16:42:42 Test message re using twitter4skype in this chat. Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 16:32:50 Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 13:16:48 Aside: During the fall and winter, Mondays usually show more people using Skype concurrently than other days of the week, but in the spring and summer, the peak moves to Tuesday and Wednesday. Also, during the fall and winter the daily peaks of Skype usage generally correspond to the workday in the Americas, but in the spring and summer it corresponds more precisely to the workday in Europe. I'm guessing that this reflects a habit in the Americas (the USA mostly) to take vacations whose duration can be measured in hours as opposed to days or weeks or months. Phil Wolff \| Skype Journal \| Oakland, California: 2008-07-16 13:03:52 do long weekends count? Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 12:30:54 Besides, with the cost of transportation being what it is, who can afford to leave home? Hudson Barton: 2008-07-16 12:25:22 Does anyone take vacations these days? Officially, our days of leisure in modern society continue to expand; fewer work hours per day, fewer work days per week, longer vacations, etc. On the other hand, sometime in the distant past people were expected to work 8 hours per day. Now that's the exception. As business globalizes, we must be available close to 16 hours per day in order to communicate with colleagues on the other side of the planet, or on weekends and national holidays because they are not consistent from country to country and culture to culture. Also, when we're on holiday our associates can reach us because our contact points are not location specific (a mailing address or a landline). Email, cell phone, and Skype follow us wherever we go. So the question is: Does anyone take a real vacation anymore? Today, a vacation means changing your routine somewhat, but it does not mean total avoidance of business as it did in the past. The persistence (stickiness) of conversation means that you cannot become totally unglued. Cyber Kinetic IP: 2008-07-13 17:18:51 test Go to top (recent postings)	Web display of this Skype conversation by Chat Publisher™ All responsibility and rights in respect to content belong to the chat participants <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com">Yahoo! Finance</a><br/>

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