2010-05-22

1 billion users soon?

Some days ago I solved for a colleague a small “Skype microphone problem”, and I discovered something funny. He possesses 4 usernames, because each time he installed Skype on a new computer, Skype asks him to create a new account. He wasn’t aware and it is indeed not always evident, that you can use your old account (if you still remember the password!).

Therefore, is my colleague equivalent to “4 active users”, 4 users, or 4 user accounts? Skype usually uses the term “user” and sometimes “registered user”. Both definitions are of course misleading, as I explained several times in the past here and here and here.

Anyway, Skype continues to claim that they have astronomical high numbers of users, as in the following statement: Skype expects 1 billion users by 2015 of May 21 in boston.com.

What interested me more in that article, was that I finally got the yearly revenue number of 2009: 716 million US$. When we look at the graph below, the growth seems to have been “as expected”.Since the demerger of Skype from eBay, financial reporting became very scarce, unless I didn’t find the right sources yet. I hope they will start to communicate again in a more decent way.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is really odd how Skype has designed the sign-up screen after installing their software. In a way I can understand that they want it as easy as possible for new users to register, but it is very hard to find out how to use an existing Skype name after a fresh install.

I have got quite a lot of Skype contacts who every now and then change their username to username1, username2 etc. and when I tell them they could just use their existing Skype name they have already gone through the trouble of emailing their new Skype name to all their contacts! :)

Jean Mercier said...

Bedankt voor de bevestiging van mijn "klacht" ;-)

Nafcom said...

One comment is wrong in that article: No need to even remember your password. you can use password reset as seen here

Jean Mercier said...

Well Jörg, the comment isn't wrong! If you don't have the password, you cannot login!

Most occasional users are not aware that it is quite easy to - indeed - ask a new password.

My point isn't about passwords anyway, it is about exagerating the number of Skype users.

Anonymous said...

skype has it's heads in the ass of ebay (due to too much brown-nosing) and that explain why they don't how to count.