News, events, milestones

Change often starts with having a conversation. At Skype, we're proud to enable global conversations that can help end poverty. We are partnering with the United Nations Millennium Campaign to foster conversations about the most important issues facing our generation during "Stand Up and Take Action!," the annual mobilization where citizens gather at events around the world to demand that world leaders eradicate extreme poverty by 2015.

As part of the program, for the first time, Skype is collaborating with Ustream to enable video calls about global poverty between world leaders, celebrities, and citizens globally to be broadcast on the internet live via Ustream's interactive video broadcasting platform. The Skype calls will be broadcast on both the Stand Up Take Action! page on Facebook and Ustream's web site.

Those participating in the Skype video calls include former Irish President Mary Robinson, as well as African entertainers Femi Kuti and Angelique Kidjo. The calls will take place throughout this week, leading up to the "Stand Up and Take Action!" weekend on October 16-18 when millions of citizens will take part in activities demanding that world leaders keep their promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

We hope you will join us to stand up to poverty by engaging in your own dialogues about this global crisis and what can be done to eradicate it. To find out how to get involved in "Stand Up and Take Action" events happening across the globe, please visit www.standagainstpoverty.org.

Based on a photo by somegeekintn – and yes, I know that it doesn’t have the Skype one in

It’s hard to believe that the iPhone App Store is now a year old – for Skype, we’re a relative newcomer. On the 31st March 2009 we launched Skype for iPhone. Since then, it’s been downloaded over 4 million times, and more than 1 million users have registered on Skype using the app.

This means that Skype is now in the pockets of millions of people like you around the world, letting you take your Skype conversations with you on the go. If you haven’t already, you should download the latest version, which adds SMS and voicemail as well as support for 17 new languages.

So – happy birthday, App Store, and here’s to another year of downloadable goodness

Oprah Winfrey talks to Josh Silverman

For the past year, Skype has enabled The Oprah Winfrey Show to talk face-to-face with anybody, anywhere, at anytime.

We've been tremendously inspired watching Oprah use Skype video to connect with everyday people, celebrities, and even animals on her show. In fact, did you see Oprah last week? Oprah had a Skype video call with a huge grizzly bear. (Now, that's a first.)

This week, we're expecting to see Oprah push the limits with Skype even further. Watch Josh Silverman, President of Skype, make an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Thursday, May 21st as part of the "Where the Skype are You?" episode. It's going to be a fascinating Skype adventure not to be missed as Oprah takes viewers to some surprising places over Skype video.

Check out the video teaser on Oprah.com.

A quick one, but a good one – in 2008, Skype users made 33 billion minutes of cross-border calls, an increase of 41% on the 2007 figure.

That’s 8% of the total combined international phone and Skype traffic.

The results of a new survey published by communications research company Telegeography also confirm that Skype is the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world – a pretty impressive feat for a five year old company

In what I promise will be the last blog post for today, I bring you the news that we've just passed another Skype milestone.

At approximately 1542 GMT, there were over 15 million Skype users online - a new record.

After an exciting week at CES, the announcement of a new Mac beta and improvements to call quality across the board, as well as new lite versions of Skype for mobile devices, it's looking like 2009 is going to be a good one. Welcome aboard

Don Lee, a retired executive, who lives a couple hours outside Chicago, celebrated his 90th birthday recently on Skype, connecting with video and audio with children and grandchildren around the United States and France. The World War II veteran told the US blog a bit about his life. In a video session, he held an ashtray souvenir made from a British artillery shell. He said being able to do the show-and-tell is one of the "great things" about Skype. This silver surfer was especially proud to receive greetings from his granddaughter Allison Gardiner, who was in Paris.

As I wrote on the UK blog a few minutes ago, Rebecca’s non-stop journey around the world has been recognised in the annual Interactive Marketing and Advertising Awards. She spent 33 days zooming around, not even pausing to eat or sleep (or talk on Skype), and shared her experiences on her blog, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube and even a column in the Telegraph — and (some of the time, at least) showed you just how easy it is to take Skype with you wherever you go.

It turns out that the Interactive Marketing and Advertising award jury rather liked the idea, particularly as it was lots of fun, got lots of attention (760,000 visits to the blog, 140,000 unique page views on Flickr and 300,000 total video views on YouTube during the 33 days) and didn’t cost us much at all. A bit like Skype itself, really.

As a result, the Skype Nomad was announced as the winner of the Technology category at the IMA awards ceremony in London last Thursday. It’s a great honour to win the award – and thanks are also due to our friends at Albion, 3 Monkeys, Outside Line, Sidekick and We Are Social who helped us get Rebecca from A to B, to C, to D, and so on

In just 35 days since we reached the 13 million milestone, we’ve passed another.

A couple of hours ago, 14 million people around the world were using Skype at the same time. That’s about the same as the population of Greater London. Or Malawi.

Pretty impressive stuff – and thanks to Jean and Phil for spotting it while I was on my way home from the office.

p.s. If there’s someone out there who you think can help us reach the next million, drop them a line using our handy tell a friend page

A few minutes ago, something pretty cool happened. Someone, somewhere in the world, downloaded the billionth copy of Skype.

It took us three and a half years, from August 2003 to February 2007, to reach the 500 million download mark, and then just 19 months for another 500 million copies to be downloaded. That’s a pretty dizzying feat for a five year old software company, and one that we’re all very proud of.

What’s more exciting, though, is what’s in store for the future. Our ambition to make Skype available on as many devices as possible and initiatives like the Skype for Asterisk beta announced on Thursday underline our dedication to bringing people closer to their friends, loved ones and colleagues – anywhere in the world; at work, home or play; and on any device.

Here’s to the next billion

The U.S. Presidential campaign is heating up with the first debate involving the candidates to take place on Skype, Reps for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain will be discussing the future of the Internet during the global OneWebDay event on Monday.

Peter Parkes is reporting on big news on the availability of the new 3 Skypephone in the Skype blog.

While in the United Kingdom recently, I not only got to meet with Peter, but also tried out the earlier version of the an earlier version of the 3 Skypephone.

Sadly, this phone is not available in the United States. But I got a look at what may be coming someday.

My Skype address book popped right up after I registered the phone. So I decided to give it a spin.

I called Chris, a friend back in Chicago, via Skype on the phone. The sound quality was great--plus the call was free.

I did run into a voice connection problem in a rural area outside the old Roman town of Bath.

Still, I was able to do a Skype chat with a friend in Tucson while on the tour bus outside Bath en route to Stonehenge. (Hope you enjoy my photos.)

I told my friend Ted that I couldn't get through on voice. I joked that the Roman cell reception was poor.

I told Ted the issue was there was no "roamin' (Roman) plan." (Nonetheless, Bath was a planned Roman city, roaming plans or not.)

Ted suggested that the Romans didn't have GSM, but were strictly analog.

I learned later that Ted wasn't far off. A manager in a 3 store in a shopping mall in Liverpool, not far from the Albert Dock, told me that in some areas voice didn't work because of antiquated infrastructure. He wasn't talking about aqueducts, either.

Still, the Skype chat with my man in Arizona worked great.

In the blog, Peter asks: "How does the S2 compare to the original 3 Skypephone?

"New user interface -- even easier to use than the original 3 Skypephone, with a carousel interface which makes switching apps speedy. It preserves the integrated Skype phonebook, so your contacts' Skype names appear alongside their landline or mobile phone numbers."

The S2 also can take photos and can browse the Web.

Maybe someday, we'll be able to use this phone, or something like it, in the USA. Meanwhile, while UK residents can enjoy the 3, we are still on the "II" in the Stone(henge) Age and can only dream of the III.

Although it hasn't exactly been kept a secret, we're all very excited to announce that the new 3 Skypephone is here. It's called the S2, and as with the first 3 Skypephone, Skype is fully integrated, so you can make and calls and send instant messages to Skype users anywhere in the world absolutely free.

Equally, it's absolutely free for other people to call you or message you on Skype while you're using the 3 Skypephone S2. Of course, it does all of the other things you'd expect a mobile to do too - make calls, send text messages, take photos and browse the web.

How does the S2 compare to the the original 3 Skypephone?

New user interface — even easier to use than the original 3 Skypephone, with a carousel interface which makes switching apps speedy. It preserves the integrated Skype phonebook, so your contacts' Skype names appear alongside their landline or mobile phone numbers.

Better build, screen and camera — it has metal keys and back as well as a bigger screen (2.2" vs. 2") at higher resolution (240 x 320 vs. 176 x 220) and a better camera (3.2 megapixel vs. 2 megapixel).

HSDPA broadband and built-in dongle capabilities - it has built in modem drivers so you can use the cable that comes in the box to plug it into your laptop and get online.

Facebook and Last.fm apps and RSS reader - convenient access to Facebook and Last.fm, plus your top RSS feeds, while on the move.

Where can I get one?

It's available in the UK only at present, and it's available to buy now. It's priced at £69.99 on Pay as You Go, and it's free with a contract from £15 per month.

Scott Durchslag joined Skype last week (June 30) as chief operating officer, reporting to President, Josh Silverman. I caught up with him Monday while he was in Luxembourg for a meeting of Skype's leadership.

I first met Scott a few years ago when he was an executive at Motorola, the mobile phone pioneer based in suburban Chicago, and I was a tech columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times.

He made a name at Moto, having led a turnaround of the company's South Asia business, where his team doubled revenues to $1billion. As Chief Strategy officer who architected the successful 2002 turnaround strategy, the RAZR phone was launched which became the best-selling mobile phone in history, helping double Moto's market share to 24 percent. Scott was also the force behind Motorola's shift away from proprietary software and toward consumer experience-based designs.

The self-described "consumer product guy" was involved in major deals with such partners as Kodak, Microsoft and Google.

The 42-year-old Chicago area native, who has an MBA from Harvard, left Motorola about a year ago, soon after the company lost Mobile Devices President Ron Garriques to Dell.

He laughed when I asked him whether war-torn Yugoslavia, where he was a freelance journalist, or Schaumburg (Motorola's headquarters) was more dangerous. He wisely kept his counsel.

He has been busy in the past year with some private equity deals and the birth of his second child.

He shared some thoughts about the Skype opportunity and where it's headed.

Continue reading "Skype's new COO Scott Durchslag speaks out " »

Hello again!

It's been 10 days since we launched the first Beta of Skype 4.0 for Windows, so I thought it would be a good idea to reflect a little and to respond to some of the feedback we've received.

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone who has given us their thoughts via our feedback site, on this and our other blogs, but also via the various feedback mechanisms we introduced for this Beta. It always amazes me how many people are so passionate about Skype and that's what makes it so enjoyable to get up and come to work every morning (apart from last Thursday - boy, did my head hurt).

We've had very different reactions to Beta 1, in particular the big change we made of having Skype in a larger window. One of the primary reasons for doing this was that we found an overwhelming majority of people had trouble working with multiple windows and were using Skype mainly to make calls and video calls, especially amongst those new to Skype. We've had some very positive feedback from a lot of people on the new way of working, and that's encouraging as it seems we're starting to solve the problems that we set out to solve. However, it's very understandable some of you used to using Skype on a regualar basis have been a bit frustrated about not being able to work with Skype the way they are used to.

We always planned to address our more advanced users in a second beta, and I just wanted to say - don't worry -- we will address the need to have Skype take up less room on the screen with a feature that allows you to reduce the size - we call it compact mode. We hope to get it out towards the end of the summer with our second beta release.

Continue reading "10 days later..." »

Hello! I'm Mike Bartlett, Director of Windows Product Management here at Skype.

Four and a bit years ago we changed the way people talked. Free calling is something that brings smiles to people all over the world, every day. We're very proud of that.

Today, we're announcing the most exciting change to Skype since inception - Skype 4.0 Beta 1 for Windows.

Over the years, we've added a lot of richness and functionality to Skype. It's no longer just a little piece of software for making free calls. Our video calling experience, now enjoyed on over a quarter of all Skype to Skype calls, is starting to take centre stage alongside other great features such as instant messaging, group conversations, SMS & voicemail.

Continue reading "Skype 4.0 Beta 1 for Windows" »

I'm in Seoul with Josh Silverman, Skype's President. Three months into the job, Josh was invited to give the keynote business speech at the Conference of Ministers on 'the Future of the Internet Economy' of the OECD (the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the leading inter-governmental organization dealing with economic and social policy).

This is a major conference, a follow-up to the OECD's 1998 Ministerial Conference on e-Commerce, which agreed the principle that the Internet and e-Commerce should be as unregulated as possible to enable their growth (which as we know, worked rather well). And we're very proud that Skype was chosen to give to the Government and Industry leaders from more than 40 of the world's most advanced countries the main message about the future of the Internet as we see it. (Summary of Josh's speech: "Skype rocks. Be open. Be cool").

Josh opened the conference together with EU Commissioner for the Information Society Vivian Reding, US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin, and Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Josh also recorded a short video for the OECD about his view of the future of the Internet - and why he loves the Net:

For those of you reading this via RSS, you can see the video (and the comments about it) on YouTube.

You should also be able to see a webcast of Josh's speech on the Future of the Internet Economy on the conference website.

Jean-Jacques, Skype Government Relations team @ OECD Ministerial in Seoul

Your mobile rings, you take the phone out and it says Unknown or a weird combination of numbers - and so you don't pick up the call. Sounds familiar?

This might have been someone calling your phone with Skype because only people that had bought online numbers could set them to show on their friends' phones when calling. Up until last week, anyway. Now anyone with a mobile phone can set its number to show when calling a landline or mobile from Skype.

Caller identification, as we call this feature, is easy to set up. Simply sign in to your account and follow the on-screen instructions. Please note that if you have previously set up your mobile number to show when sending SMS messages you don't need to verify the number again. Just choose to use the same number to show for SkypeOut calls.

Setting caller identification is free to use and costs the price of two SMS messages to set up. It's available for almost any mobile phone and subscription type in almost every country of the world.

Beta-friendly users have been running Skype 3.8 for Windows since April 2. But with the usual beta imperfections now sanded off, this audio-focused iteration of Skype is ready for public release. If you're a Windows user, head to the download page to get it.

Continue reading "Skype 3.8 for Windows goes public with audio improvements, other tweaks" »

Update: Our calling subscriptions have been updated to include Finland, Israel, Moscow, St Petersburg, Buenos Aires and Córdoba (Argentina) - please refer to the more recent blog post for the latest information.

Most people look forward to Fridays (or their cultural equivalent that promises rest, fun and fresh air). Banishing the ruthless alarm clock until Monday morning which, for a brief moment, appears eons away.

Well, my kind colleagues here at Skype have taken a crack at making the world's Mondays a bit less blue. Enter Skype's brand new flat-rate calling subscriptions that were announced this Monday, i.e. today. According to the announcement, the subscriptions "signal the first time Skype has offered a single, monthly flat rate for international calling to landline numbers in 34 countries."

Continue reading "Going the (long) distance: Skype's new calling subscriptions " »

The Hollywood Reporter has done a nice story on how quick-thinking CNN tech staff in the US helped the network out of an equipment crunch by using Skype to carry a video interview.

This isn't the first time a major network has done so, as the article also points out. But it could help open the rusty floodgates. We're all used to seeing journalists in khaki-colored vests filing reports from the world's distant hotspots over the videophone, and strangely, the choppy quality of these reports does add a layer of raw believability to what is being transmitted. (Similarly, AM broadcasts to me feel more "radio-like" than the squeaky clean FM signals or the kills-bugs-dead sterility of satellite radio)

Continue reading "Skype "a good thing" for CNN" »

Thanks to a lot of generous Skype users who voted for us in the Communications category of CNET's Webware 100 awards last year, the results gave us reason to smile.

Since then, a lot has happened. Japan, for example, has launched Kizuna, an experimental satellite that will bring low-cost 1.2gbps downloads (and spiffy uploads) to Japan and parts of South-East Asia. Not bad.

But Skype hasn't sat still either, launching High Quality Video, the 3 Skypephone, squeezing itself into the new Sony Mylo, the Sony PSP Slim & Lite, and is finding other cool ways to land in people's pockets. And yesterday, we announced the latest feature: a brand new CEO who will join us on March 24.

What I mean to say is this: if you think we've still got the mojo after 4.5 years and 100bn Skype-to-Skype minutes, you can now vote for us for Webware 100 in 2008.

Thanks!

Hi, I'm Josh. The new guy. On March 24, I'll step aboard as CEO to lead the next stage of Skype's exciting journey.

To say that I'm looking forward to leading this company is an understatement. Skype is one of the defining internet technologies of our era. It's helping people all over the planet connect with each other like never before. It's changing the world. You don't look forward to something like that. You drop what you're doing and jump aboard.

I’m well aware that it is more than just an ingenious feat of engineering, which has made Skype one of the most rapidly-adopted technologies in human history. It’s a passionate community of users who believe in the power of human connection, in bold innovation and in striving for product excellence which has put us on our path to changing the world. I share your passion, and take very seriously the responsibility of all of us at Skype to be good stewards of the product and the brand.

So what can you expect from me? That I’m serious about wanting to build the greatest products -- and the greatest company -- on Earth. That doing so means listening well, being willing to think different and take risks. And in everything we do, one thing is certain: we'll always have the best interests of the Skype community at heart.

I’m the new guy, and have a lot to learn. To really understand Skype's cultural and technological DNA, my number one priority is to do a lot of listening and learning. With my wife and kids about to begin their adventure in Estonia as well, I have all the support I could ever need. I want to know everything about the technology, the team and the community. And I hope to share some of my observations on this very blog and see what you think, too.

As chief executive, I'm stepping into a flight deck first captained by co-founder Niklas Zennström and latterly interim CEO Michael van Swaaij. Both of whom have done great, meaningful things with this company. I don't yet have the right to expect your enthusiastic two thumbs up. But as we go further on this journey together, I plan to earn it.

In the meantime, I look forward to meeting and talking with as many of you as possible over the months and years to come.

This post has been a few days coming and the news has already been reported elsewhere. But in keeping with tradition, here's to confirm that just six weeks after we broke the 11m concurrent-user barrier, we've now passed the 12m mark.

I'll refrain from sharing fun low-calorie factoids about the meaning of 12 million this time. Can't use that trick too often -- it to needs feel fresh the next time around.

In the absence of a thirsty cat, a glass of milk quickly goes sour when left on the kitchen table. Thankfully, awards have a longer shelf life and I hope you'll excuse my travel-driven tardiness in tipping the old blogger's sombrero to the Global Mobile Awards panel at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Earlier this week, the 3 Skypephone was highly commended for its innovative approach in the Best Mobile Handset or Device category.

As the judges -- industry experts, analysts, journalists and academics -- put it, "The Skypephone is an innovative partnership between Hutchison 3 and Skype. In addition to the headline Skype service, the phone offers extremely good value for money with a wide range of features not previously seen at this price point."

Since the 3 Skypephone was announced in late October, it's been enjoying an excellent ride in the hands of Skype-loving consumers and it sure feels nice to see the industry recognize the innovation that this handset embodies.

Incidentally, the 3 Skypephone was also one of the main attractions among journalists, bloggers and other visitors to the Skype stand at last Sunday's Showstoppers. Even as you see more and more Skype-enabled mobile and wireless handsets pop up over time, the 3 Skypephone will continue to play a special role in showing people what's possible -- and what to expect.

Apparently, 100 billion humans have walked on this planet through the ages. But don't quote me on that. (Although I'm sure these guys will know.)

Apparently, the human brain has about 100 billion neurons. But don't quote me on that. (Although I'm sure if you leaf through The Scientific American Book of the Brain, you'll find out for certain.)

Apparently, Dr. Evil decided to hold the world ransom for 100 billion dollars. Though he later lost his wits and upgraded his demand to one billion, gagillion, fafillion, shabolubalu million illion yillion... yen. Still, don't quote me on that. (Instead, get these guys to back it up.)

And now, Skype has served 100 billion minutes worth of Skype-to-Skype calls. Please, do quote me on that.

This figure is so mind-numbingly large that it's nigh impossible to wrap my head around it. (Even if attempted, the exercise would likely result in a headache of cosmic proportions that no amount of pickle juice can possibly cure.)

But consider this:

- Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls are free
- Skype's been around for about 4.5 years
- As of the end of 2007, Skype had 276m registered users, adding 30 million in Q4 alone

When mixed together, this cocktail gets explosive. And it becomes obvious that at 100bn minutes, Skype conversations are really getting out of hand. In a good way.

Thanks for getting us where we are, folks. And keep talking. Next stop: one billion, gagillion, fafillion, shabolubalu million illion yillion Skype-to-Skype minutes.

Earlier this month, we said it'd be available later this month.

If you've got a Sony PSP Slim & Lite and have been waiting since CES for a system software update so you could make Skype calls, now is the time to act. All you need to do is to upgrade your handheld's system software to version 3.90.

With the update, foreshadowed in Sony's PlayStation blog and now also announced by the Sony folks in Europe, PSP Slim & Lite users can make free voice calls to 276m other registered Skype users, see which friends are online and available to talk.

Also, if you have a bit of Skype credit lying around, you can use your PSP to make cheap SkypeOut calls to landlines and mobiles anywhere on the home planet.

To get started with Skype on PSP, it might be worth checking out this video by John Koller, senior marketing manager for PSP at Sony:

From Crackle: Skype on the PSP

As you may have heard, on March 31, Meg Whitman will step down as President and CEO of eBay, Skype's parent company. She will be succeeded by John Donahoe, who has been President of eBay Marketplaces.

For more on management changes at eBay, please see the eBay press release.

Amid the rushing bodies in the crazy anthill known as CES, we've just received the good news that Skype has broken the 11 million concurrent-user barrier. We hit the 10 million mark back in October and it's immensely gratifying to see that the universe continues to expand as it does. A deep to our users and keep the conversations going!

MySpaceIM with Skype is now live and available to MySpace and Skype users. The new product is available in 20 countries where MySpace has localized communities and adds Skype voice calls to MySpace’s IM client, which has 25 million installed users.

It's these enlightened millions on MySpace that can now place free Skype calls to their friends on MySpace or Skype. The really, really nice bit is that MySpace users don't have to download any additional Skype software. And they can now link their MySpace profiles, photos or avatars to their Skype names. (See the MySpaceIM FAQ for more on how to get started.)

Ahead of the public release, more than half a million MySpace users had hooked up to the beta version of MySpaceIM with Skype.

May your conversations be merry!

A few days ago, I wrote about why Skype felt it had no choice but to recall and replace about 8,000 London-based 0207 SkypeIn numbers. Our colleagues in customer support have pulled in extra resources and are totally focused on making the transition as smooth as possible.

Hardest hit were users who had subscribed to the affected SkypeIn numbers for 12 months. (SkypeIn subscriptions are available for 3 or 12 months). We know that small businesses are among them and that their trust and confidence is a precious, fragile thing. It’s with them that we’ll have to work the hardest to win back their confidence.

So here’s where things stand at the moment. Our customer support team has been working round the clock to assist everyone affected. At the moment, they've responded to over 75 percent of those who’ve required additional support. And we hope to sort out the remaining inquiries this week. (If there are any outstanding questions, please send an email to sichange@skype.net If you'd like to explore the possibility of retaining your number outside of your Skype account, please contact GCI Telecom on sales@geonum.co.uk).

Everything is being done to keep this from happening in the future. We’re no strangers to crises and major issues like this help us learn as a business. We’ll use the knowledge wisely. Have faith in us.

Just as water vapor turns into ice crystals in Northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere, we’re getting better tools to help get things done without having to leave the house (or office). Skype today released the public version of Skype 3.6 for Windows, with major under-the-hood changes that focus on video. High Quality Video, to be precise*.

There are two ways to describe what we’ve done. You could say the video window on Skype has grown to 640x480 pixels, delivering up to 30 frames per second. Or, if you prefer plain English, you can now begin to enjoy free High Quality Video calls that are sharper, smoother and better than anything you’ve seen on Skype before.

To experience free High Quality Video, this is what both sides of the conversation will need:

*
Skype 3.6 for Windows

* a Logitech webcam that has been optimized and certified for High Quality Video (the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000, the Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks or the Logitech QuickCam Sphere AF (Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF in the U.S.)
* Logitech QuickCam software, version 11.5
* a dual-core PC
* a broadband internet connection (384 kbps and above).

For more, please see the High Quality Video page on the Skype website.

The three webcams are already available worldwide, in retail as well as the Skype web store. In Europe, the Skype shop has a special offer for the webcams. The Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 or the Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks will normally cost €99.99, but if you head for the Skype webstore, you’ll also get a free headset, free shipping, and SkypeOut credit worth up to three hours of calls to landlines and mobiles. In the US, Skype offers a $20 rebate on either of these products ($99.99 before the rebate).

*If this sounds familiar, it should – the more adventurous among you have been able to play with High Quality Video as part of the beta version of Skype 3.6 for Windows since October 10. You may also have read about Skype’s collaboration with Logitech to help make High Quality Video a reality.

Free video calls have been a feature on Skype since late 2005 and have helped millions of people keep in touch. It’s become so popular that one in four Skype-to-Skype calls today involves video. Like they say in Hollywood – show, don’t tell.

Things are about to get a whole lot bigger, sharper and smoother. Today, Skype and Logitech announced a collaboration to give Skype users the kind of video quality that used to be the privilege of big businesses.

Enter High Quality Video, due in November. (Although, if you’re adventurous enough to play with beta software, you’re welcome to try it out now.) Explaining what it does is a bit like dancing about architecture, because you really need to see it in action. But the video window on Skype has grown to 640x480 pixels, delivering up to 30 frames per second. This produces a level of clarity, detail and fluid motion that is pretty astounding. It’s been immensely satisfying to watch the reactions of people who’ve seen it for the first time. Them jaws, they tend to drop.

To experience free High Quality Video, this is what both sides of the conversation will need:

- Skype 3.6 for Windows (expected to be available in November)
- a Logitech webcam that has been optimized and certified for High Quality Video (the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000, the Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks or the Logitech QuickCam Sphere AF (Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF in the U.S.)
- Logitech QuickCam software, version 11.5 (expected to be available in November at www.logitech.com/downloads)
- a dual-core PC
- a broadband connection (384 kbps and above).

For more, please see the High Quality Video page on the Skype website.

The three webcams are already available worldwide, in retail as well as the Skype web store. In Europe, the Skype shop has a special offer for the webcams. The Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 or the Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks will normally cost €99.99, but if you head for the Skype webstore, you’ll also get a free headset, free shipping, and SkypeOut credit worth up to three hours of calls to landlines and mobiles. In the US, Skype offers a $20 rebate on either of these products ($99.99 before the rebate).

One shouldn’t really trust rumors. But we’ve heard plenty of them in recent weeks and in this case, they weren’t too far from the truth. In tandem with the mobile operator 3, Skype has just launched a new mobile phone called 3 Skypephone. One that lets you make free Skype-to-Skype calls and send free Skype instant messages from anywhere. Not just from the desktop, not just from the office. From anywhere.

And it works the other way, too. That is, if your friend in the US runs Skype on her desktop and calls you over Skype, your 3 Skypephone will ring. And the call won't cost either of you a penny.

What we're dealing with here is a mobile internet phone with Skype built in. That is, in addition to Skype calls the phone also handles conventional calls and can be used to access 3’s other internet services. We're dealing with a new breed here, folks. Because this is the first time an operator has offered a mass-market mobile phone purpose-built for free internet calls. In a package that's easy to use, is easy on the pocketbook and looks so good you may want to chain it to your wrist (lest gravity or someone's sticky fingers get the better of it).

So, where can you get the thing and what's the damage? The 3 Skypephone will be available this year in the UK, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau and Sweden. Skype-to-Skype calls are free from your 3 Skypephone as long as you are on contract or your pay-as-you-go 3 credit is topped up monthly. In the UK the 3 Skypephone is £49.99 on a pay-as-you-go tariff or free on a contract.

The new phone is available from November 2 in 3Stores across the UK and from Skype and 3’s websites in time for Christmas. And it's available for pre-order in the UK from today.

See the press release for more details.

Whoosh.

Earlier today, Skype announced that it has teamed up with MySpace to create MySpaceIM with Skype, which will add Skype voice calls to the MySpace instant-messaging tool. When we officially welcome MySpace’s 110 million monthly users to the Skype family next month, this collaboration will make the combination of MySpace and Skype into the world’s largest voice-connected community.

And then things got even better.

A few hours following the MySpace announcement, we surpassed 10 million simultaneous online Skype users. For the first time, like, ever. Just three years ago, on October 20, 2004, we were popping Champagne bottles to mark 1 million simultaneous users. Which we thought was unbelievable. And it was only earlier this year that we passed the 9 million mark.

It's not yeast or baking soda that makes us grow like this. It's all about the people out there across the ever-shrinking globe, falling for Skype as a way to keep in touch.

And that's a beautiful thing.

Do you use MySpace? Well, soon it’ll get even better.

Skype has teamed up with MySpace to create MySpaceIM with Skype, which adds Skype voice calls to the MySpace instant messaging tool. The collaboration turns MySpace into the world's largest voice-connected community.

As a result, MySpace and Skype users will be able to make high quality calls to each other for free, and millions of MySpace users in 20 countries will be able to tap into Skype to make pretty cheap calls to landlines and mobile phones around the world.

In addition, MySpace users will be able to set up a SkypeIn number, voicemail and call forwarding. You also connect your MySpace profile to your Skype account. This makes it easy to share your MySpace profile and avatar with Skype contacts. Of course, Skype users will be able to call MySpace users as well.

So when does all this happen? Soon. By mid-November, you’ll be able to download MySpace IM with Skype. You’ll have drum your fingers until then, but we think it’ll be worth the wait.

For more information, please see the press release.

The JiWire Hotspot Finder is a Skype Extra which lets you find Wi-Fi hotspots anywhere in the world through Skype. It searches over 140,000 hotspots in 134 countries — the most comprehensive database of hotspots in the world.

You can use it to find free and paid hotspots, searching by location, e.g. ‘Mumbai’ or by using a postal or ZIP code — and you can narrow down your search by specifying a keyword, like ‘café’ or by a specific location like ‘Starbucks’. You can also use the ‘Find Me’ button to find hotspots around your current location, which is probably particularly handy when you’re completely lost.

Jim Courtney of Skype Journal was at Skype’s Developer event in San José where JiWire received the cup, and spoke with Kevin McKenzie, JiWire’s CEO, and Nihad Hafiz, the principal developer:

Speaking with Kevin he mentioned that, while there is no business model associated with JiWire Hotspot Finder for Skype, he does see it as providing awareness generation for their services that may lead to both purchase of their WiFi security tool and to use of their ad-supported desktop services. Kevin also mentioned that Nihad had developed the JiWire Hotspot Finder for Skype as a ‘work of passion’ outside his normal responsibilities at JiWire. And that passion certainly came through in my discussion with Nihad.

Andy Abramson describes the JiWire Hotspot Finder as ‘sensational’ — and I’d agree. Download it now and give it a try

On September 22nd, 2007, Skype reached its 20 millionth registered user in North America, doubling from 10 million registered users in just over the last 12 months.

Or think about it this way — nearly 10 percent of the more than 232 million Internet users in North America have now downloaded and tried out Skype.

Three other facts about ten percent, because it's Friday:

• We don't actually use just 10% of our brains, despite popular mythology


• According to Google, 10% of websites are dangerous


• In most parts of Europe, a 10% tip in a restaurant is a way of showing appreciation, believe it or not...

I'm writing this in Prague where Paul Amery, who heads the Skype Developer Program, last night announced the winning entry in Skype's 2007 Mashup Competition: PamFax from Germany-based PamConsult.

A mashup is a software application or service that combines data from more than one source into an integrated experience. It has parallels in the practice of merging together two or more songs for something entirely new and cool. Think of Christina Aguilera's vocals from "Genie in a Bottle" merged into the Strokes' "Hard to Explain".

Entries to the mashup competition were judged against these criteria: Skypeness, usability, coolness, stability, usefulness, flair and layout. The winner, PamFax, allows you to send a fax to any fax machine in the world and easily pay with your Skype credit. (I realize the previous sentence used the word "fax" three times. Sorry 'bout that.) Registration is not needed, nor is pre-payment. Optionally, you get fax status notifications via Skype chat, SMS or email. And there's one more little cool touch: you can look up where the recipient is located, using Google Maps.

The judging panel consisted of Paul Amery, Antoine Bertout, Lester Madden, Damon Williams, Adam Trachtenberg, Phil Wolff, Jim Courtney, John Musser, Jack Dorsey and Julian Bond. (Also see Jim Courtney's excellent extended mashup competition post on Skype Journal.)

All mashup entries can be found here.

(updated at 16.30 GMT with Symantec reference)

(update at 17.15 GMT: FSecure now calls the virus W32/Skipi.A. Symantec has named it W32.Pykspa.D.)

(update at 9 am GMT on Sep. 11: Our security team is actively engaging with domain owners to shut down malicious websites that are being used to spread the virus.)

- - - - -

The new week has started with a bang. And not the kind of bang we like.

Here's what Kurt Sauer, Skype's Chief Security Officer, has to say:

"Skype has learned that a computer virus called “w32/Ramex.A” is affecting users of Skype for Windows. Users whose computers are infected with this virus will send a chat message to other Skype users asking them to click on a web link that can infect the computer of the person who receives the message.

"We would like to encourage our users to ensure that they are running anti-virus software on their computers and to download the latest anti-virus updates in order to provide the best protection against this and other viruses."

More information can be found at heartbeat.skype.com. Wishing you a virus-free week.

It was about ten weeks ago when we last talked about new SkypeIn countries on this blog. Back then, we hit the sweet eighteen. SkypeIn countries, that is.

Now, we've added two more. Mexico and Ireland. The country that gave us Pancho Villa has a population of over 108 million. When the 6 million Irish are added, we have a crowd that packs a punch. And deserves SkypeIn numbers.

Which is exactly what they've got now. Enjoy!

For those who think SkypeIn is just an orthographically challenged way of saying things like "Gone Skypin'", I have this little explainer: When you have a SkypeIn number, your friends who don’t have Skype can call a regular phone number. And you will receive the call on your computer or any other piece of gear that runs Skype.

As Borat would say, "Is nice!"

Four years ago today, the first public beta version of a little piece of software was released upon an unsuspecting world. The screenshots above help beam us back to the late summer of 2003. (The same day the Inuit of Labrador signed a deal with the Canadian government to self-govern Nunatsiavut. Good to know Skype isn't alone in the Department of Nice Things to Happen That Day.) Skype today looks quite a bit different from what you see above. But don't be fooled. Inside, its soul is still the same.

This afternoon, Skype employees around the globe will raise a glass to the four-year-old. But here are a few oven-fresh words penned by the man without whom there would be little to celebrate, Skype's co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennström:

- - -

Today, Skype turned four. I can hardly believe it's been that long. It only seems like yesterday when Janus and I were talking about people being able to use the computer like a phone. But without a phone. And without a phone bill.

Niklas

Hello all,

Yesterday, we posted an explanation of what happened to Skype on August 16. Some reactions to the explanation, however, have reminded us of one of the basic tenets of communication: It's not what you say. It's what they hear. We'd therefore like to clear a few misunderstandings that emerged in yesterday's reactions to our explanation of what transpired last week.

1. Are we blaming Microsoft for what happened?

We don't blame anyone but ourselves. The Microsoft Update patches were merely a catalyst -- a trigger -- for a series of events that led to the disruption of Skype, not the root cause of it. And Microsoft has been very helpful and supportive throughout.

The high number of post-update reboots affected Skype’s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources at the time, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact. The self-healing mechanisms of the P2P network upon which Skype’s software runs have worked well in the past. Simply put, every single time Skype has needed to recover from reboots that naturally accompany a routine Windows Update, there hasn’t been a problem.

Unfortunately, this time, for the first time, Skype was unable to rise to the challenge and the reasons for this were exceptional. In this instance, the day’s Skype traffic patterns, combined with the large number of reboots, revealed a previously unseen fault in the P2P network resource allocation algorithm Skype used. Consequently, the P2P network’s self-healing function didn’t work quickly enough. Skype's peer-to-peer core was not properly tuned to cope with the load and core size changes that occurred on August 16. The reboots resulting from software patching merely served as a catalyst. This combination of factors created a situation where the self-healing needed outside intervention and assistance by our engineers.

2. What was different about this set of Microsoft update patches?

In short – there was nothing different about this set of Microsoft patches. During a joint call soon after problems were detected, Skype and Microsoft engineers went through the list of patches that had been pushed out. We ruled each one out as a possible cause for Skype's problems. We also walked through the standard Windows Update process to understand it better and to ensure that nothing in the process had changed from the past (and nothing had). The Microsoft team was fantastic to work with, and after going through the potential causes, it appeared clearer than ever to us that our software's P2P network management algorithm was not tuned to take into account a combination of high load and supernode rebooting.

3. How come previous Microsoft update patches didn't cause disruption?

That's because the update patches were not the cause of the disruption. In previous instances where a large number of supernodes in the P2P network were rebooted, other factors of a "perfect storm" had not been present. That is, there had not been such a combination of high usage load during supernode rebooting. As a result, P2P network resources were allocated efficiently and self-healing worked fast enough to overcome the challenge.

4. Has the bug been fixed? Should Skype users worry about future Microsoft Update patches and reboots?

Yes, the bug has been squashed. The parameters of the P2P network have been tuned to be smarter about how similar situations should be handled. Once we found the algorithmic fix to ensure continued operation in the face of high numbers of client reboots, the efforts focused squarely on stabilising the P2P core. The fix means that we've tuned Skype's P2P core so that it can cope with simultaneous P2P network load and core size changes similar to those that occurred on August 16. We’d like to reassure our users across the globe that we’ve done everything we need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We’ve already introduced a number of improvements to our software to ensure our users will not be similarly affected – in the unlikely possibility of this combination of events recurring.

(Posted at 5:35 AM GMT, updated first two paragraphs at 11:45 AM GMT)

On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users' computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.

The high number of restarts affected Skype’s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.

Normally Skype’s peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days.

The issue has now been identified explicitly within Skype. We can confirm categorically that no malicious activities were attributed or that our users’ security was not, at any point, at risk.

This disruption was unprecedented in terms of its impact and scope. We would like to point out that very few technologies or communications networks today are guaranteed to operate without interruptions.

We are very proud that over the four years of its operation, Skype has provided a technically resilient communications tool to millions of people worldwide. Skype has now identified and already introduced a number of improvements to its software to ensure that our users will not be similarly affected in the unlikely possibility of this combination of events recurring.

The Skype community of users has been incredibly supportive and we are very grateful for all their good wishes.

Hello friends,

Take a deep breath. Skype is back to normal.

On Monday, we'll provide a more detailed explanation of what happened. Until then, we'd like to apologize and thank you. Precisely in that order. We know how difficult and frustrating the past two days have been. And still, your good wishes kept flowing in. Thank you for the amazing patience, trust and support!

(Posted at 11am GMT)

Hello again,

We are pleased to announce that the situation continues to improve. The sign-on problems have been resolved. Skype presence and chat may still take a few more hours to be fully operational. We know what our faithful users have been going through and we thank you for your patience and kind support.

If you are one of the minority who may still be experiencing problems, please be patient. You do not need to adjust or restart your computer. Skype will start working for you very soon.

We will issue a further update when we know that Skype is functioning normally, or if there is further material news.

We’ve commandeered extra supplies of pizza and coffee, and we can promise that the Skype people aren’t going anywhere until they’re happy that everything is back to normal.

(Posted at 00.30 AM GMT)

Hello all,

As Europe has woken up to a new day and Asia is entering the evening hours, here's the latest on the sign-on problem.

We're on the road to recovery. Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day.

An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we’re not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday.

Finally, we'd like to dispel a couple of theories that we are still hearing. Neither Wednesday’s planned maintenance of our web-based payment services nor any form of attack was related to the current sign-on issues in any way.

We'll update you again as soon as we can. Thanks for hanging tight.

Hey,

even though it is too early to call out anything definite yet we are now seeing signs of improvement in our sign-on performance. We continue to monitor the situation through Europe waking up this morning and have more for you in approximately 4 hours.

My client is now occasionally bringing in stacks of unread multichats. Hope yours too.

Hello,

just wanted to drop a line that everyone at Skype working on resolving the sign-on issue is still up. We're fixing issues in our networking software and monitoring the clients getting online with increased success.

It's been a loooong day (and night) for many and we are gradually moving to new shifts of fresh brains to help out those getting to well deserved few hours of sleep. Be sure that the Skype family as a whole will not retire before you can get back to all the Skype conversations you want, need or just feel like having. Sorry for keeping you split that long.

(Updated at 5:00GMT)

Hello again,

Everyone at Skype continues to work hard at resolving the current software issue. We are making good progress. We feel that we are on the right track to bring back services to normal.

We thank you for your continued support and are thinking of you every step of the way.

(Updated at 2:15am GMT)

Hello everyone,

Apologies for the delay, but we can now update you on the Skype sign-on issue. As we continue to work hard at resolving the problem, we wanted to dispel some of the concerns that you may have. The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. We love our customers too much to let that happen. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network.

Rest assured that everyone at Skype is working around the clock -- from Tallinn to Luxembourg to San Jose -- to resume normal service as quickly as possible.

(Updated at 10pm GMT)

Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype.  Our engineering team has determined that it's a software issue.  We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours.  Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologise for the inconvenience.

- - -

A note at 20:06 GMT: We'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to send us their thoughts, concerns and good wishes. It means the world to those working so hard to resolve this thing.

As I make my way through no fewer than 517 emails that some evil spirit produced during my week-and-a-half holiday, I'm pleased to pull back from the depths of the inbox and mention today's coolest bit of Skype-related news.

Namely, Nokia's funky N800 Internet Tablet now speaks Skype. Officially, that is. (You may have noticed in late June that Skype did a pre-release demo of Skype for the N800 in New York).

Andrew Brennan from Skype Gear has written a nice review that you can read here. Once you're convinced it's something for you, install the latest Nokia firmware version from here, as instructed by Andrew's review. Or download Skype for the N800 here.

Ok, it's actually three new SkypeIn countries: Chile, New Zealand and Romania. But because the Dominican Republic was added quietly earlier this year, it's worth an honorable mention.

SkypeIn numbers are now available in 18 countries. Here's a quick refresher: When you have a SkypeIn number, your friends who don’t have Skype can call a regular phone number. And you will receive the call on your computer or any other piece of gear that runs Skype.

Update: Skype To Go is now part of our subscriptions.

You live in Sweden and you have a mobile in your pocket. And a friend in San Nicolás de los Garza. But calling this impossibly beautiful-sounding place in Mexico would burn a hole in said pocket.

Enter Skype To Go. It's part of Skype Pro and you can use it to ring your Mexican friend -- let's call him Ishmael -- from your mobile phone for as long as you want. It's not entirely free, but at least there's no burnin' holes in anybody's pants.

Allow me to demonstrate:

Continue reading "Skype To Go: international calls from your mobile at local rates" »

A lot of people have become allergic to any mention of awards, as they no longer carry the weight they once did. They've become a conveyer-belt industry and mounds of acrylic junk make it increasingly difficult to spot the few awards that have any real meaning. Luckily, we have satellite imagery, stabilizer-equipped binoculars and solar-powered pigs to sniff out the truffles.

And here's one of them. Editors at CNET Webware have selected Skype as a finalist in the communications category in the first-ever Webware 100 awards. This new award is meant to recognize the best Web 2.0 sites, services and applications. I'm told that more than 4,000 nominations were submitted by users, so it's pretty nice to make it to the final stretch.

We're modest by nature, but if your love is deep, you are welcome to cast a vote for us through June 11, when the top 25 finalists in each category will be listed. Go to www.webware.com/100 to do the deed.

Winners will be announced on June 18.

Update on June 19: Excellent news! And here's the proof. Thanks CNET! And thanks to all who voted for Skype.

Just this week, Paul Amery who's the Director of our Skype Developer Program, announced the Skype Game Channel. You can make a game and package it as a Skype Extra and then publish it through this channel -- and make some money in the process, as Skype will handle things like payments and billing for you.

The main market that we are looking at is what's called "casual games". We're not talking about hardcore shooter or role-playing games here (although we know that for some gamers, Skype works well in those for team communication). Rather, we're thinking of bringing more lightweight community-based games to Skype and your desktop. Things like chess, checkers, Monopoly, card games, board games and such. We see that there's a real interest in these, as a fairly substantial portion of [extras](http://extras.skype.com) downloads fall in this category.

For more information, see the [games starting page on our Developer Zone](https://developer.skype.com/gamesdev), the [Game Channel demo](http://skype.easybits.com/demo/SGC.htm) and the [Game Channel page](http://skype.easybits.com/). If you're a developer interested in this, you can [sign up for our developer newsletter](https://developer.skype.com/NewsletterSubscribe) so that we can keep you posted.

If you already have specific games proposals in mind that you'd like to develop and distribute through this channel, please contact us by sending email to "skypegames 'at' easybits.com" and "bizdev.apidev 'at' skype.net".

I'm very happy to share that SkypeFind reached a significant milestone of first 100,000 business listings yesterday. Thanks to all you contributors this far, keep those entries and reviews coming!

And if you have not even searched SkypeFind for the most popular pizza restaurant in your city, get the new and shiny Windows 3.2 client and do it now.

The pickup this far has been impressive given the product has only been available for 8 weeks, going live in the Windows 3.1 Gold Release March 14, so we’re averaging around 13,000 listings per week.

The rate of listings being added is gaining momentum so hopefully the next 100,000 listings will happen much, much sooner. And of course, the first million is a milestone we always look forward to.

Yesterday we put out [this piece of news](http://about.skype.com/2007/04/skype_extras_surpass_10_million_third-party_plug-in_downloads.html) about how more than 10 million Extras have been downloaded from our [Extras Gallery](https://extras.skype.com/), with [CrazyTalk](https://extras.skype.com/69/view) and [Pamela](https://extras.skype.com/65/view) being among the more popular ones.

Just out of curiosity, I pulled our records about how quickly Skype itself reached 10 million downloads. We released Skype in August 2003, and it hit 10 million downloads in April 2004, bringing it to roughly six months. For the extras, it only took four months. So I think this is a powerful example of how Skype continues to foster ecosystems and complementary businesses around it. Hopefully we can show similar figures with our other new initiatives down the road.

Hi. I'm back. I was off for a few weeks, but life at Skype never stops and a lot has been happening. So instead of posting something original, today I'll reuse the great work of my colleagues and point you to a few random items in our other blogs (did you know we have quite a few? See the list in the right sidebar and subscribe to the ones that interest you.)

[Skype 2.6 beta for Mac OS X.](http://share.skype.com/sites/mac/2007/04/skype_26_for_mac_beta.html) I like. Typing indicators, joining public chats and many other goodies. See the [post](http://share.skype.com/sites/mac/2007/04/skype_26_for_mac_beta.html) for the full list of what's new.

Secondly, [our values.](http://jobs.skype.com/2007/04/softer_side_of_skype_2007.html) Now this is really really important and I'm happy to see these posted. We often say that values define "how" we do things, and here they are, updated for 2007. It's likely we'll keep updating them, similarly as we have also done before, but this is where we stand today.

The values are an extremely interesting read. I was part of the team compiling them, and so I can assure you that we didn't just create them "out of the blue". They capture a wealth of experience, insight and learnings from the past few years of Skype and the daily challenges and opportunities we'll need to keep managing.

And while we're at it, are you keeping an eye on our [jobs site feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/SkypeJobs)? It has a constantly updating list of our available positions, together with great interludes such as this "softer side and values" post.

Finally, if you're a Skype-related developer, or just thinking of becoming one, you can come see us and other developers in person if you happen to be in London in May. There's a [Skype developer event](http://share.skype.com/sites/devzone/2007/04/skype_geek_event_in_london.html) happening right at our London office on Thursday, May 10th. As space is limited, and for facilities security, please register by e-mail by following instructions in that post.

We just started a blog of its own for Skype Prime — skypeprime.skype.com. This is where we will be sharing ideas for promoting and pricing Skype Prime services. Of course this is also another channel for users to send us feedback. Skype Prime is still in Beta status and your ideas and comments will help to make it better for the final release.

If you've already signed up for Skype Prime to get paid for your skills and talents subscribe to the RSS feed. It may also be worthwhile to take a look around if you haven't even heard of Skype Prime before.

> "Ask not what Skype can do for you -- ask what you can do for Skype."

Remember how we [started the dialog about consumer rights on wireless networks in the US](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2007/02/opening_the_dialog_about_consu.html)? I haven't posted on it for the past month, but things have been quietly moving on. And now, we are at a stage where we need your help.

If you agree with what we are suggesting (read the [previous post](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2007/02/opening_the_dialog_about_consu.html) for more information), then please help us by going to the FCC site [here](http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi) and show your support by sending in your comment. The "Proceeding" number that you should use is RM-11361, and you fill in the rest of the fields as indicated, and just send it in. The deadline to do this is April 30, so be sure to send your comments over the next few weeks.

Skype reached half a billion (in other words, 500 million) downloads about two weeks ago. We reached this in 42 months since the launch in August 2003. As of today, six or more people download Skype every second as we speak.

There are two business practices that we currently see happening in the wireless networks, especially in the US. (Note that in this post, I use "wireless" in the sense of "mobile" and not wifi.) One is to lock the phones to the network of a given carrier so that you have to stay with a given carrier for a period of time and cannot switch even if you want to (or switching is very costly and complicated). Another is to dictate to the phone manufacturers which feature they can or can not have on a given market. For example, some new mobile phones have two models: one for the European market with wifi, and another for the US market without wifi, because the US carriers do not want people to be able to use wifi from their phones.

Both of these practices have been going on for a while and everyone seems to have drifted into thinking that this is "how things always were" and this is how they should be.

It doesn't have to be this way. We at Skype think different. We obviously want to run Skype on as many mobile devices as possible, and it would help us if the networks and devices were more open. We continue to believe in innovation and consumer choice and we believe that many people would choose Skype for calling over their mobile phone's data plan or wifi if they had a choice. Choice and competition is always good for users.

We want to open up a dialog with users, wireless carriers, phone manufacturers and the other related parties in the US. So on February 20 (just this week), we filed a petition with the US [Federal Communications Commission](http://www.fcc.gov/) (FCC) that describes our thinking on this and suggests to open an industry forum to discuss the situation and possible ways forward. (FCC is the government body in the US that regulates wireless carriers.) [Download the petition here](http://download.skype.com/share/skype_fcc_200702.pdf).

Continue reading "Opening the dialog about consumer rights on wireless (mobile) networks" »

On January 29, we saw over nine million people online in Skype for the first time ever. As you may have noticed, this blog is undergoing a bit of a Mac takeover, so this is what the onliners figure looks like in Skype for Mac.

Next up: double digits in the millions department. I wonder if our testers have actually tested that it will display fine, or will it crash and burn as soon as it hits the tenth million...

CES, probably one of the largest and most important annual gadget shows on the planet, took place this week in Las Vegas. We put out [two](http://about.skype.com/2007/01/new_skype_desktop_internet_pho.html) [announcements](http://about.skype.com/2007/01/skype_advances_the_future_of_i.html) and had a wide array of products with various hardware partners. For more detailed coverage, check out our [Gear](http://www.skype.com/gear) and [UK](http://share.skype.com/sites/uk/) blogs.

As there are only about 54 hours left of this year, let's take a look at what were the top events for Skype in 2006, as covered in this blog. This is a completely personal selection by myself, focusing on products and other buzz, I'm sure others would have made a different one.

### January

[Announcing a whole bunch of stuff at CES... including the NETGEAR WiFi phone](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/01/launching_a_whole_bunch_of_stu.html)

[Skype 2.0 for Windows gold release with video.](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/01/skype_for_windows_20_with_vide.html) It hasn't even been a year of Skype video. (The first ever public beta of Skype for Windows with video came out on December 1 2005.)

[5 million people online.](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/01/5_million_online_skypers.html) (We're on track to hit 9 million soon now.)

Continue reading "Highlights of 2006" »

Skype is expanding. Today, we announced in Czech Republic that we are going to establish an engineering office in Prague in early 2007, to complement our other locations in Tallinn, London, Luxembourg, North America and elsewhere. Tallinn continues to be our most important engineering facility, but we need to expand beyond Estonia to sustain our growth rate.

Some Skype people actually went scouting through many Central European countries earlier this year, looking for a new location based on a number of factors. We chose Czech Republic simply because it had the best mix. (I asked if good beer was one of the factors, but didn't receive direct comments. )

We already are in Czech Republic. Sort of. A while ago, we launched a co-branded version of Skype with Centrum.cz, the country's second-largest Internet portal. Now, in addition to just having a local version of the software, we will have an actual office there where you can come and work and help us build the "next great thing" from Skype.

So if you're from Czech Republic and would like to learn more about how you can join, take a look at the current Prague vacancies. And check back often, as we're just now busy building the local version of our jobs site and preparing other information.

Skype is hosting a Mobile Monday on December 11th on Mobile Social Networking a our offices. The space is fairly limited, so you need to sign up if you want to come and hear about the topic from a great lineup of speakers, as well as take a look at what's the place where we build Skype like

See this for more logistics and sign-up info. UPDATE: they tell me that the event is full so can no longer sign up. But stay tuned for remarks, feedback and comments on this and other blogs. And be sure to sign up to the [Yahoo group](http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/momolondon/) to participate on the mailing list and keep an eye on this and future events. The podcasts and video from this and previous events are [here](http://momo.claritycp.com/).

I'm not sure if it's connected with Skype 3.0 beta coming out and everybody trying it, but today was also the first day when we saw more than 8 million people simultaneously online in Skype.

We're proud to announce that Skype 2.0 for Mac gold just went up to our website. This means that finally Mac and Windows users can see each other with free video calls. Using a new Mac with built-in camera you don't even need to worry about finding a good webcam, it just works.

You can read more about the launch over on the Mac blog.

We now have a new blog to keep an eye on the ever-growing Skype hardware, gear and gadget world. Occasionally you've seen some hardware news on this main English Share blog too, but it has got lost among other stuff, and we've really not managed to cover all the interesting things.

So if you're specifically interested in what we collectively call Skype Gear, just head over to the fresh brand new Skype Gear blog. This Share blog you're currently reading will continue to poke various aspects of the Skype life, culture and products, occasionally possibly also featuring really big hardware news, but no longer all the daily stuff.

While we're on the Gear topic, here's something handy to get you kickstarted in the whole Skype gear and accessories world. The Skype Accessories Guide catalogs the types of devices and accessories we work with and give certifications to. As things get more complex, it's important to be organized and keep the terminology consistent. So we introduce two classes of "things". Accessories improve Skype calls made from your computer so they plug in to your computer, while devices allow you to make Skype calls without using your computer.

As the dinosaurs above are explaining, the Skypecast server is temporarily down. We apologize for the inconvenience. A well-skilled team of technicians and geniuses are currently working overtime to fix the problem, and we promise not to let them rest until it's taken care of. Please check back in tomorrow if you'd like to host a Skypecast, as we expect to have the issues resolved as soon as possible. In the meantime, why not feed your brain by clicking here and listening to a recording of a previous Skypecast with a candidate for UN Secretary General?

UPDATE: back to normal now.

The Skype 3rd birthday card competition is now over. A big THANK YOU to all of you who sent us a card.

We got over 160 cards from all over the world. We got e-cards, pictures, videos, even a podcast. What we like especially about the cards was their diversity, both in content and where they came from. Skype is truly spread all over the world and it shows well in the cards.

Here is the winner as well as some other highlighted entries.

The winning entry

Here it is. Click on the picture to see the bigger, better readable texts.

It comes from Susan, originally from the US but currently living in South Korea. Congratulations, Susan! We will shortly ship you the prizes, one USR9610 speakerphone and one USR9601 USB Internet Phone from our friends at US Robotics, as well as a Skype Cordless VoIP Dualphone from AmperorDirect.com.

Read an interview with Susan.

Continue reading "Skype third birthday card competition results" »

While we keep celebrating our birthday and you keep sending us cards, another great thing happened just today.

For the first time ever, more than seven million people were online. If only for a brief moment. You should all see the 7M in your Skype software over the coming days.

Thanks for the gift, all you seven million. Good timing

Google and eBay just [announced](http://investor.ebay.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=209064) a major multi-year cooperation agreement. Skype plays a major part in the Click-to-Call plans.

Regarding interoperability, the following quote regarding Google Talk and Skype is interesting.

> The companies will also explore interoperability between Skype and Google Talk via open standards to enable text chat and online presence.

What does all this mean in detail? We'll see next year, as testing of all these new joint initiatives is said to begin in early 2007. For now, one thing is sure -- great companies working together is always exciting news.

29th of August, next Tuesday, is Skype's 3rd birthday. [See the original announcement](http://about.skype.com/2003/08/skype_beta_launched.html) and [the letter from Niklas on our first birthday](http://about.skype.com/2004/08/skype_celebrates_1_year_annive.html). While the figures quoted in that letter are quite small by today's Skype standards, the following remains very true today and beyond.

> Today people are Skyping to and from every country in the world, enhancing free borderless knowledge exchange as people maintain contact with others as if they were around the corner, even when they are around the world. ... Thank you for your involvement with Skype. We hope to continue delighting.

Here's [a million thank you's](http://www.hallmark.com/ECardWeb/ECV.jsp?a=5172531983591M129849581Y) to everyone who has supported Skype over these three years and here's also a My Picture for Skype.

### The birthday card

If you want to celebrate our 3rd birthday with us, you don't have to send us expensive gifts or flowers. But you can send a birthday card. **Please e-mail your birthday card to .** It can be a picture, photo, video, just written wishes, anything really. If it's a picture or video, you can put it on Flickr, YouTube or any other of those Internet things and just send us the link. Please include your Skype Name.

We'll publish the better cards right here on Share.Skype together with the authors' Skype Names, and we also have a Grand Jury to select the one and only best card who wins a prize (see below).

We appreciate everything we receive, but original content creations (as opposed to readymade e-cards such as the one I used above) have the best chance of winning.

Birthday card entry submission is open until September 3rd 2006, 23:59:59 GMT (next Sunday). So you basically got this and the next weekend to work on it. We publish the winners and deliver the prize a few weeks after that.

### The prize

The best birthday card author will receive one [USR9610 speakerphone](http://www.usr-emea.com/products/p-voip-product.asp?prod=voip-9610a) AND one [USR9601 USB Internet Phone](http://www.usr-emea.com/products/p-voip-product.asp?prod=voip-9601a) from our friends at [US Robotics](http://www.usr.com), shipped to you anywhere in the world totally free.

UPDATE: the grand prize winner ALSO receives the [Skype Cordless VoIP Dualphone](http://www.amperordirect.com/pc/c-internet-phones/internet-phone-dualphone.html) from [AmperorDirect.com](http://www.amperordirect.com), shipped to you for free.

Continue reading "Happy third birthday, Skype! Send us a card and win a prize" »

Skype got the Baltic Brand Formula 2006 award. So we're the best Baltic brand. I'm not sure what's with the "Formula" theme, but in any case, it means that the award was a helmet and we had to try it.

There was pins, ribbons and cards frenzy all over the place. Everyone had these lanyards where you could attach pins that you got from various booths and stands at certain times. And you could take them away from staff, too. I got three pins from somewhere but had to give them all away to the interested attendees. Oh well. I didn't particularly care for these myself so at least I could make other people happy. The Chatter blog [has](http://ebaychatter.typepad.com/the_chatter/2006/06/pins_cards_fuzz.html) [more](http://ebaychatter.typepad.com/the_chatter/2006/06/a_winning_hand.html) on this.

At eBay Live!, both new and seasoned Skypers walking by the booth showed massive interest in the various Skype hardware available. One man said he had a condition that prevented him from holding a handset up for too long, so he'd rather use a speakerphone. Others liked the handsets or cordless phones, especially the IPEVO ones.w We had IPEVO handsets, Linksys cordless phones, Polycom speakerphones, Logitech headsets and webcams and Creative webcams for display and testing, and all of these generated great interest. There are great opportunities for hardware providers and resellers in North America and we are happy to do our part to facilitate the relevant deals and transactions.

Credit once again goes to the makers of Skype for making a product that just works and didn't let us down during the demos. Our greatest concerns always revolve around the call quality, and both Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls worked simply great. The only trouble we had was with some webcams -- we found that if the computer was on for too long and we made too many calls, some calls no longer had video. Not sure if it was a PC, Skype or webcam driver problem, and since we didn't have much opportunity to debug, we used the universal remedy of rebooting the computer that always fixed it.

Meg Whitman announced Skype buttons in select eBay categories in her Tuesday's keynote. Some people walked by the next days to ask more. Here's where we stand with the buttons.

You can already put a [Skype button](http://www.skype.com/go/skypebuttons) on your "About Me" page. And there will be an [eBay Announcement Board post](http://www2.ebay.com/aw/marketing.shtml) early next week (June 19th onwards), clarifying the details about Skype buttons in listings in the initial trial categories and the mechanics about this works. We hear there will be a simple wizard available so that you won't actually have to do any HTML code to put the button in your listings.

Here you see Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, who was kind enough to take his time to drop by the Skype booth to say hi and see what we had. He is here standing in awe over the Skype buttons and other things we showed.

This year's [eBay Live!](http://pages.ebay.com/ebaylive/) in sunny Las Vegas has Skype all over the place. Just before eBay Live! started, we wrapped up our first and very successful participation in the [eBay Developers Conference](http://share.skype.com/sites/devzone/2006/06/legos_kid_lucky_and_the_skype.html), but Live! is a much more massive event. There were about 800 people at the DevCon, but over 15,000 (fifteen THOUSAND) at live.

Our stand is right in the middle of the main showroom and is one of the biggest and most prominent. PayPal has a bigger stand, but they have Skype features in it too. eBay Marketplaces itself does not have a single stand, rather, it has the stands divided up across content areas like shipping, seller scalability, government relations etc.

Elvis saying hi.

Continue reading "(Skype is in) Vegas, baby" »

Skype hit 100 million registered Skype Names a few hours ago. 1:12 PM GMT to be precise. That's pretty remarkable -- as far as we know, no Internet programs have hit that mark in two and a half years since their birth before. Skype continues to be the fastest-growing Internet program.

Here's a My Picture you can use in Skype to celebrate.

We took a look at Skype Names. Here's how the whole 100M names are distributed across name lengths. No surprise here, a pretty average long-tail normal distribution curve. 10-character Skype Names are the most popular.

(What's with the less-than-6-character Skype Names? No, you can't get one through the regular methods. Yes, there are a few out there. We can manually add them. We've been thinking it would be fun to run "short Skype Name" auctions on eBay so you could buy a name like "john", "jill" and then hold on to it forever. Would you buy one?)

More stats. The total number of characters in all Skype Names combined is 1,034,643,723. That's roughly equal to 1 GB of data. Meaning that if you wanted to just write all the Skype Names in a file, you would need 1 GB of disk space.

Let's put this another way. Suppose we wanted to print a phonebook with all Skype Names in it, to help our callers. According to [this source](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001Ib&topic_id=1), a phonebook page has about 18,000 characters. So the Skype phone book would have to be more than 57,000 pages thick. Fortunately, we don't need to print that -- we have put it right in Skype itself. Just click the "Search" button in Skype and find whoever you want without going through all those pages.

And here's a lousy screen capture of the moment when 100 million actually happened on skype.com earlier today

We're preparing celebrations today as we're nearing 100 million registered Skype Names. That's quite a massive amount of people you can call for free. (More than there are people in most countries of the world, actually.)

A warm "thank you" goes from everybody at Skype to each and every one of those 100 million Skype users for helping us all get here. We could not have done without you. Thanks. Let's rock on.

To celebrate, we’ll be giving away 100 SkypeOut minutes to 100 lucky users who are online when we hit this important milestone. We’re counting down to the important moment on [Skype.com](http://www.skype.com/) right now. Plus you can help us to reach this landmark by [getting your friends](http://www.skype.com/go/share) to join the 100+ million Skype community.

Skype just [announced](http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060411005435&newsLang=en) that we acquired Sonorit Holding AS and its US subsidiary Camino Networks, Inc., a provider of voice technology for the Internet.

Skype products consist of many components to ensure the best possible user experience. Many of them we build in-house, others we license. Sometimes an acquisition makes the most sense. So this is just another component in the mix of great products and technologies that Skype is built upon.

We like talking with you guys in the blog format. It's been a fun ride for all involved. So we bring you the fresh shiny new Skype for Mac blog where we'll collect anything you may want to know (and we feel like publishing) about Skype, Macs and how the two play together. Feel free to post your questions, comments or trackbacks there about anything that has to do with Mac.

This is Nils, by the way. He's the Mac product manager running the blog. For those not so familiar with Macs, he's not really as hot as this picture depicts, sorry There's just this software Photo Booth on Macs that you can use to mess around with your photo.

On March 27 2006, more than 6 million people were simultaneously online in Skype.

With the jump from [5 million](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/01/5_million_online_skypers.html) to 6M in just 63 days, this is our "fastest million" ever.

Some SkypeOut rates are changing.

### Rates decreases and new countries to Global Rate

As of this morning (8 AM GMT to be precise), there are new regions included in the Global Rate, where calling costs just 0.017 €/minute. These are Estonia, Singapore, Singapore (Mobile), Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea (Mobile). Price to Estonian mobiles also decreased a bit.

### Rates increases

SkypeOut rates to some regions (Ecuador, Palestine Authority, Zimbabwe) will increase slightly on 8 AM GMT, April 21. (We give 30 days advance notice of all the increases.)

[See the announcement for all the details.](http://support.skype.com/?_a=announcements&_m=details&_i=23)

Some Skype partner folks are at CeBIT. See the coverage with pictures and comments in our [partner blog](http://share.skype.com/sites/partners/).

[SkypeWeb](http://www.skype.com/go/skypebuttons) was really acting up over the past few days. It was on and off and didn't often return any results, breaking many sites, including our own blogs. Sorry about that. All is back to good now in the SkypeWebLand. Here's an actual e-mail sent out by our site operations/backend team just now. Thanks guys for your hard work in keeping things running.

> hi,
now we have found root cause of this problem and solved it. problem was triggered by increase of service usage which showed us a bug in service architecture. now we have solved problem and learned from that.
thnx for the team for not eating and not sleeping for a while.
hope you won't hear from us on this topic anymore, we go back behind the
scenes where we belong

The announcement and more details are here. In short -- if you are using any Skype for Windows version between 1.4.0.84 and 2.0.0.73, the Central Contacts List feature is disabled for you. The client continues to work normally, but the contact list will not be synchronised with the contact server. So it's better that you [upgrade to the latest version](http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/) (currently 2.0.0.90) right away. Other platforms are not affected.

We had to make this change because there was a bug in these particular versions which caused the performance of the Central Contact List to be degraded for everyone else. Many users have noted that Central Contact List is not performing reliably at times, and this bug was largely the cause for this. By disabling the Central Contact List for these versions, we make it work better for everyone else.

Skype.com website has captured the first spot in web usage tracking service Alexa.com's Movers & Shakers list. According to them we have jumped from 233rd overall position to 126th spot (in terms of weekly traffic) in a matter of one week. Everybody involved with our website is pretty happy about it. Especially since we just launched our new navigation theme (check out that super-useful footer) couple of days ago.

Geoffrey Mack from Alexa.com has dedicated a post to Skype's good growth and compared it to Vonage traffic (check out that graph):

Where was I? Oh, yes Skype. Just for flavor, I added vonage on the graph. You can see that Vonage, despite millions spent on television advertising (I can't get that damn hill-billy vonage song out of my head "woo-hoo, woo-hoo-hoo") is virtually flat, while skype has more than doubled its user base.

There's more interesting Skype website traffic information over at Alexa's site, just remember that this is not official Skype.com traffic statistics. You can read more about Alexa.com and how it collects its data.

We now have a [Skype blog in Spanish -- El Blog de Skype en español](http://share.skype.com/sites/es/). This is our second non-English blog (the first was [Estonian -- Share Skype eesti keeles](http://share.skype.com/sites/et/). Other languages are upcoming.

The Spanish blog is run by a number of folks. We start with a guest author [Jesús Diaz](http://share.skype.com/sites/es/author-jesusdiaz.html). So if you read Spanish, [bookmark the blog right away](http://share.skype.com/sites/es/) and please give us feedback and comments there.

Would you like to post on share.skype.com in English or any other language? Or are you running a Skype-related blog already? Skype is looking for guest authors for share.skype.com in various languages. Please post here in comments or talk to me over Skype chat.

Here's a summary of what we've been working on in the payments area over the past months. Did you know that Skype supports natively no less than 14 currencies?

Customers wanting to top up their Skype Credit to pay for Skype’s offerings can now take advantage of online payment methods, special vouchers and scratch cards bought from high street stores. As well as giving people more payment options, Skype has made it easier for people on most continents – including Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania – to buy and keep track of their Skype Credit in 14 local currencies, including Euros, US Dollars, Polish Zloty, Brazilian Real, Canadian Dollar, British Pound, New Taiwanese Dollar, Swedish Krona, Danish Krona, Norwegian Krone, Japanese Yen, Hong Kong Dollar, Australian Dollar and Swiss Francs.

Skype customers can choose to pay for Skype Credit via GlobalCollect and FIRSTGATE’s Click&Buy. GlobalCollect enables local offline and online bank transfer payments to be made in 50 countries worldwide. Click&Buy allows online purchases to be made with multiple local payment options in countries across Europe and the Americas.

Along with multiple payment options, Skype customers can now enjoy a simpler and faster way to buy Skype Credit with PayPal. Once customers pre-approve payments with PayPal on their Skype accounts, they can pay in just two clicks, without entering any additional or credit card numbers. With PayPal, Skype customers can fund their payments using their stored PayPal balances, their bank accounts, or any major credit card. PayPal has more than 100 million accounts across 55 markets worldwide, and supports seven currencies.

In addition, Skype customers without a debit or credit card can now purchase Skype Credit with Ukash vouchers bought from high street retailers in more than 50,000 locations across the UK, Republic of Ireland and Spain, with further countries to be added shortly. Skype Scratch cards are currently available in Sweden and Finland at Clas Ohlson and other retail stores, with more countries and retailers to be added soon.

If you're already a Skype partner or thinking of becoming one, check out our new partners blog. Run by the same people who work with partners daily, it's going to provide handy tips and tricks about how to work best with Skype, and news about current and upcoming events and anything else a future partner might want to know. Obviously, Skype is a hot place these days and we are sorry if we cannot promptly and individually respond to all of your enquiries and requests, as we get quite a lot of those. Together with our [partners homepage](http://www.skype.com/partners/), the blog will hopefully do a good job at bridging that gap .

This just in from Niklas and Janus...

When we started to think about developing Skype we did so believing that it was inevitable that broadband access would become low-cost and ubiquitous and as it did, communications would increasingly move to the Internet and be accessible through any connected device.

There is no more important shared goal that we have as an industry than helping to make broadband Internet access widespread and low cost -- if together we succeed then everyone wins. So as part of Skype’s role in making this happen and our strategy of increasing your choices when it comes to how and with what devices you can get online, today we are announcing that we are making a small investment in a new and exciting company called [FON](http://en.fon.com/).

FON is trying to make it easy for anyone who has already invested in broadband and a wireless access point to securely share their Wi-Fi, so together we can build a unified global wireless network which is easy to access, safe to share and reasonably priced. What [Martin Varsavsky](http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/fon/a-dream-come-true.html) and the people at FON are doing in making it easy for people to access Wi-Fi anywhere is exactly what we had in our minds as a logical next step as Skype began to proliferate across desktops around the world, so we’re delighted to be a part of the [FON revolution](http://blog.fon.com/en/archive/a-dream-come-true.html).

At Skype we are huge believers in the power of community. Community has driven our growth and we think you’ll like this idea as much as we do because it’s one more powerful option we will all have in deciding how and where we can get online. We also think this idea is bigger than any one business, so we are delighted to work with Martin and the rest of the FON team to make the idea of a global broadband wireless network a reality.

Over the last year, we’ve been really focused on helping you extend the Skype experience beyond your desktop. We’ve introduced great new features like video and call-forwarding and we’ve worked with great hardware partners like [Linksys](http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?childpagename=US%2FLayout&packedargs=c%3DL_Promotion_C2%26cid%3D1127783201481&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper), Philips, Motorola and Panasonic so you can have a cordless experience of Skype at home or in your office. In fact just in the last month, we announced at CES with [Netgear](http://tools.netgear.com/skype/) that you will be able to use Skype on a Wi-Fi phone -- no computer, no wires, just turn it on and talk. Over the course of this next year you can expect to see more great Skype accessories coming out from great partners like these and more.

But great accessories are just one piece of the equation. The other piece is reliable and cost-effective broadband access anywhere you go. In 2005, we were thrilled to work with [innovative mobile operators](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/01/skype_and_3_partner_for_mobile.html) in Germany, Sweden and Hong Kong to offer Skype alongside their unlimited flat-rate 3G data packages. We’ve also been able to launch an early version of our Skype Zones service across over 20,000 locations worldwide with Boingo and The Cloud, two of the world’s leading Wi-Fi hotspot access providers. Our goal is to give users a seamless experience of all forms of broadband access. Now with FON there will be another option to connect -- [we hope you enjoy it](http://en.fon.com/registration/downloading-area.php).

**Niklas and Janus**

Security is a big thing on Skype. From day 1 and even before in the core architecture design, we've taken security seriously and continue to do so. For those interested in digging in to the subject, I'm happy to introduce our [security blog](http://share.skype.com/sites/security/) with Kurt Sauer, Skype's CSO (Chief Security Officer), taking the lead. For starters, see Kurt's introductory comments on Skype's PKI model.

Niklas Zennström & co are on webcast RIGHT NOW. Bill Gates and other interesting people are also there. Check it out. If you miss(ed) it, they say a podcast will be available.

Update: [the podcast is here](http://streamstudio.world-television.com/gaia/wef/worldeconomicforum_annualmeeting2006/podcast/15498.mp3).

Today, Jan 23 2006, was the first time when more than 5 million users in Skype were simultaneously online.

We got from 4 to 5 million in about 3 months. There's 5.066 million on that picture -- some people reported seeing as much as 5.072.

5 million people is:

* more than 3 times the number of people in Estonia
* about 13 times the people living in Tallinn where we are building Skype
* about a third of greater London area
* a quarter of New York metropolitan area
* 1/260th the population of China

5 million people together weigh about 350 thousand tons. It would take about 11 thousand Boeing 747 planes to carry them all in the passenger cabin, or just a bit over 1000 if you stacked everyone in the cargo section, where it probably wouldn't be too comfortable this way. (There was some nonsense here before where I mixed tons and kilograms.)

At any given moment, there are tens of thousands of free Skype-to-Skype calls that some of those 5 million people are engaged in. Put in the same room, that would be pretty loud. And if all those calls were paid, that would be a pretty big chunk of cash every second that now doesn't get spent. So please do us a favour -- take the cash that we've saved you, and go buy yourself some chocolate or whatever goodie you're up for, to help us celebrate today's 5 million.

Skype for Windows 2.0 official version is out now. [Get it](http://www.skype.com/products/skype/windows/) and start making video calls.

Key new stuff in here:

* **Video (obviously!).** Free one-to-one video calls.
* **Contact grouping.** Finally here for heavy users.
* **Mood messages.**

Continue reading "Skype for Windows 2.0 with video out now" »

We're present at the [2006 International CES](http://www.cesweb.org/) at Las Vegas. Find us in the eBay booth.

We're announcing a [bunch of new products](http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_ces.html):

* [D-Link Skype USB phone adapter (DPH-50U)](http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_ces_dlink.html), that connects your regular phones to Skype on your computer. You can receive or make both traditional telephone and Skype calls from the same phone
* [two new IPEVO devices](http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_ces_ipevo.html) -- FLY.1 is a USB cordless handset with a speakerphone; and Xing USB speakerphone, "the first device from IPEVO designed for business teleconferencing using Skype". Both are PC and Mac compatible.
* [KODAK Photo Voice, the first Skype certified online photo sharing experience](http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_ces_kodak.html)
* [Panasonic](http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_ces_panasonic.html) – a cordless telephone product that interfaces with Skype
* VTech USB7100 Phone

plus...

* Creative Skype Internet PhonePLUS -- a standalone phone that enables anyone to make free Skype calls over the Internet without a PC connection. That's right. A standalone Skype phone that plugs in to your router.
* [NETGEAR's Skype WiFi phone](http://www.netgear.com/pressroom/press_releasesdetail.php?id=305)

This is what the IPEVO FLY.1 looks like:

Here's the Creative Skype Internet PhonePLUS photo. Click for larger view. Thanks to [TMCnet](http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/skype/photo-of-creative-skype-phone.asp).

And last but not least, here's the NETGEAR phone. Again from [Endgadget](http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/04/netgear-wifi-phone-for-skype-no-pc-required/).

Some of the products are available immediately, such as [KODAK Photo Voice](http://www.kodakgallery.com/photovoice). Some will be available in a while and we then announce it here. Check the press releases for details. See also the [CES press materials about Skype](http://www.virtualpressoffice.com/presskit/index.jsp?showId=1119531853568&companyId=1133164753102).

Hi, and a happy new year to all who survived through the parties.

We start off with good news: in December, we announced that we're changing SkypeOut prices. The changes were implemented today just now. Prices to several popular destinations lowered, some increases too. [See the full details.](http://support.skype.com/?_a=announcements&_m=details&_i=21)

Here's a lesson about how to overlook something and thus create confusion and disappointment that should never have been there. A conversation I just had with [Andy](http://andyabramson.blogs.com/).

> [14:31:00] Andy Abramson says: one change on yiour blog many of us noticed
[14:31:13] Jaanus Kase says: yes?
[14:31:22] Andy Abramson says: you no longer list the respected bloggers site like you used to on the right side
[14:31:32] Andy Abramson says: instead you have your internal staff
[14:31:42] Jaanus Kase says: ahh.. thats coming back with a vengeance.. we wanted to get the switch done. I didnt expect this to draw so much attention
[14:31:53] Andy Abramson says: it sent a very bad message
[14:32:10] Jaanus Kase says:
[14:32:11] Andy Abramson says: skype went from being inside the community to wanting to be its own
[14:32:27] Andy Abramson says: almost saying "thanks for getting us here" now "get lost"
[14:32:59] Jaanus Kase says: ouch. both definitely deserve a place. I figured the staff ones would be interesting
[14:33:12] Andy Abramson says: When Saul sent me the link to the new site and asked me to blog about it, and i saw that i said...well, fancy that..
[14:33:36] Andy Abramson says: They dropped one of the things that was up there from the very beginning...
[14:34:15] Andy Abramson says: by adding the staff stuff it became a corporate blog instead not the community blog

Continue reading ""Friends of Skype" is back, and should never have been gone" »

So enjoy. We fixed a lot of visible things...

* sign in sometimes not working
* some weird backslashes and formatting showing up and words "eaten" when commenting
* developer zone feed not updating

... plus the whole thing is much friendlier to authors and editors.

Continue reading "The new share.skype com blogs are here" »

SkypeOut call minute price changes will happen on January 2, 2006. Some minute prices decrease (Armenia - Mobile, Cayman Islands, Cyprus - Mobile, Guatemala - Mobile, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Pakistan - Mobile, Puerto Rico) and some increase (Algeria, Diego Garcia, French Guiana, Lesotho, Libya, St Helena, Vatican City). We're announcing them a month in advance. [See the full details.](http://support.skype.com/?_a=announcements&_m=details&_i=21)

This morning, Skype hit 200 million downloads. To celebrate, we made a picture. Set it as your own picture too (Right-click on the picture, click "Save Picture As..." and save it somewhere, and then set it as My Picture in your Skype.)

Update: here's another version that works even better in Skype.

Some fun facts about our downloads. Skype download infrastructure is quite massive and cool -- thumbs up to those who maintain it around the clock.

* At peak time, we're pumping out close to 10 downloads a second. That's almost a million downloads every single day by now. Not quite a million every day yet, but we're getting there.
* The download traffic at peak time adds up to 500 Mbit/sec, or 0.5 Gbit/sec. That's 500 times more than an average 1 Mbit home "broadband" connection.
* We got from 0 to 100M downloads in 595 days, from 100M to 150M in 124 days, from 150M to 200M in 83 days. There's no signs of the pace slowing down.
* Take all of the figures with a grain of salt, since obviously not every download is completed and ends with an installation. But it's still cool.

After a while, we've got to yet another million, fourth this time.

Also, worth noting (thanks to Bill from [Skype Journal](http://www.skypejournal.com) for the idea) that almost exactly a year ago, on October 20 2004, a year back from tomorrow, we had our first million simultaneous users. So that's 3 million onliners added in 365 days, or on an average, 8000 new onliners a day.

Share your thoughts and comments [in the forum](http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=37913).

The rumors are over. This just got announced. To celebrate the event, go ahead and download the latest stable public version of Skype. See also eBay's webcast and other info from their events page.

Below is a letter from Niklas and Janus about the occasion.

Hello,

When Janus and I originally created Skype, we had a vision of creating the world's largest communications company to revolutionise the way everyone communicates through the internet.

We believed that voice is the most natural way for people to communicate and that making it widely and easily available would be a major step forward in Internet communications. We also thought that as the Internet grew, there was no reason why everyone in world shouldn't be able to talk for free.

We set out to build software which was not just powerful but also incredibly easy to install and use. Janus and I wanted to make something which would make talking on the Internet the simplest and most natural thing in the world.

We are now working with an amazing dedicated and talented team of people across the world to deliver on this vision. Skype people are now in 15 countries, from 27 nationalities and everyday we wake up and think about one thing -- how can we make voice the most natural form of Internet communication.

It seems to have caught on.

In only two years, we have been fortunate to have experienced spectacular growth. There are now over 54 million people using Skype to talk for free to families, friends and colleagues in 225 countries and territories around the world -- everyday another 150,000 new people sign up to join in. We also have a fantastic and fast-growing network of thousands of partners and developers building exciting hardware and software products, as well services around the Skype experience.

Now today we are thrilled to be joining forces with Meg Whitman and the fantastic team at eBay to help us deliver on our vision and help make Skype the voice of the Internet. Working with eBay and Paypal -- two of the greatest brands on the Internet -- we can't think of any more powerful platforms to accelerate our growth.

We want to take this opportunity to thank every one of you who has contributed so far to the growth of Skype. But let's remember, we've only just begun to write the story of becoming the voice of the Internet.

We are totally motivated for now and the next several years to continue all this great work and to try to exceed all of your expectations and more. We have some great ideas about what happens in the next chapter and think we have some powerful friends to help us realize our dreams. We can't wait to work with you all in writing the next chapter and together make it possible for the whole world to talk for free.

Thanks again, all our best

Niklas and Janus

We just hit two cool numbers fairly close in time. Today we passed 150 million downloads, and a few days back, 50 million registered Skype Names. It has been argued about what numbers are useful to track for whatever purpose may be in question -- be it Skype's future or how we are doing currently or what not. All that business lingo aside, we think large round numbers like 50 or 150 million are just fun, so we thought we'd let you know.

.. is over for this time. [Read more about the Free Skype Days](http://www.skype.com/go/linked?campaign=freedays0705), and then [tell other people.](/recommend/)

As the banner on [skype.com front page](http://www.skype.com) says, today is our first Free SkypeOut Day. So just go to [My Account page](http://www.skype.com/go/myaccount) and get your free credit. This offer lasts for 24 hours.

UPDATE: the first Free SkypeOut Day is now over. Stay tuned for the next ones later this summer.

Skype is not only about engineering, coding and product development. We are a business, and we just posted openings for two great business positions -- [business development administrator in London](http://www.skype.com/company/jobs/london/index.html#job-BD-Admin-JB) and [assistant financial controller in Luxembourg](http://www.skype.com/company/jobs/other/index.html#job-AFC-L-MG). If that sounds like something for you, come help us build Skype! All the application info is on the linked pages. Or take a look at the [other Skype vacancies around the world](http://www.skype.com/company/jobs/vacancies/).

Today, we hit the 10 billion Skype-to-Skype call minutes served mark at around 18:00 GMT. Let's recap. Skype was released in August 2003. We hit 1 billion minutes served somewhere in July 2004. Now, it's 10 billion minutes in June 2005.

So it took roughly the same time to get from 0 to 1 billion, as it took to get from 1 billion to 10 billion. Does this mean we'll be able to celebrate 100 billion next May? Who knows. In any case, you can track all the figures on the [Facts & Figures](http://share.skype.com/facts_and_figures/tools_for_sharing/facts_%26_figures/) page.

[VON Stockholm](http://www.voneurope.com): What a gathering - even at 10.00 on the pre-opening seminar day, Monday, blessed with the excitement of EU regulatory framework discussion and having gotten out of bed at 0400 on a cold Monday morning, the halls were buzzing with expectation.

The day went by, and the well known names we know from other blogs, from regulators, from industry groups and the formative voices of the industry begun to speak up and we could put faces to the voices and blogs. It was great to meet you all.

Continue reading "Skype at VON Europe 2005" »

3 million people were concurrently online on Wed, May 18.

Continue reading "3 Million Online Users" »