We now have a new site, the [Skype Heartbeat](http://heartbeat.skype.com). The objective of Heartbeat is to be a no-nonsense location where you can see the status of the Skype infrastructure components that support all the free and paid features. There are two main parts to the site:

* Current status of all our primary and secondary systems, indicated with icon as well as text. If you see it bright red and pulsing, it’s fine (the smaller icons don’t pulse, they’re just bright red). If it’s darker and broken, there’s no circulation and it’s dead.
* Text announcements about infrastructure availability and other important changes, such as pricelist or regional updates.

I like the concept of "heartbeat" that we came up with for this. Sometimes you see these things called "system status" or something equally boring. But they’re not boring -- behind the scenes, there are countless machines and people working day and night to keep Skype running, even though Skype is about direct connections between users for the most part. So if Skype is an ecosystem and organism, it must also have a central circulatory system to keep all the components in good health. And Heartbeat shows you what’s the current health of this all.

So whenever you’re having trouble with Skype, be sure to check [Heartbeat](http://heartbeat.skype.com). The other channels to get more information continue to be our [Customer Service](http://support.skype.com) and [forums](http://forum.skype.com).