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Can anyone shed light on this statistic from the press release: "With 170 million connected users..." Every article on Skype for the last 3 months has mention

by portman 15y ago

Can anyone shed light on this statistic from the press release: "With 170 million connected users..." Every article on Skype for the last 3 months has mentioned "600 million accounts". (http://www.google.com/search?q=skype+600+million+accounts http://www.google.com/search?q=skype+600+million+accounts) But I can't find an original source for that number; it seems everyone is quoting "industry estimates". Were the estimates on Skype's userbase wildly wrong, or is a "connected account" somehow different?

JacobAldridge 15y ago
It's a really good question - I made the note elsewhere [1] that I was really surprised at 663 million users, because that would make Skype more popular than Facebook (by measurements of popularity that don't include swearing the calls that start glitching ten minutes in). 170 million I can believe more readily. It could just be the difference between users and registered accounts (I know several people who've set up Skype 4-5 times over the years, using it rarely and then creating a new account on a new machine when they need to use it again). [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531626 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531626
- nikcub 15y ago
  Facebook has 650M active users. They always measure and cite active users, to their credit they do not fudge around with the numbers in their PR Skype is 170M active (quarterly, Facebook is monthly), and 680M total registered. A lot more people have given Skype their payment details than have Facebook - which results in Skype monetizing a lot better (but still not awesome monetization - yet, but it is improving). Edit: Facebook has never published total registered, see http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics It is difficult to apples v apples with skype + facebook since their methodologies vary, but it seems that the fb active user base is ~3x Skype
  - codeup 15y ago
    How many registered users does FB have in total?
    - nikcub 15y ago
      I went back as far as I could, and Facebook never released total registered users. It wouldn't be relevant since fan pages, product pages, apps etc. are all in the same namespace, and there would be a lot of spam and dev accounts I remember reading a blog post where somebody tried to calculate it by enumerating user ID's, but he didn't come to a clear conclusion. the FB key numbers are 650M active per month, 50% of that active per day. I wish other companies were as simple and transparent with their own stats PR - instead of nonsense like 'messages processed per fortnight', 'total logins', etc. etc.
  - danieldk 15y ago
    How does one count users? I previously used a Skype account, but now I share a Skype phone with my girlfriend and her account. I'd guess there are plenty of families with one Skype account.
    - nikcub 15y ago
      with skype all they do is look at unique logins per financial quarter, so in your scenario (and I assume it is common, because I have my own family members doing the same thing) it will count as a single user perhaps they should adjust their terminology and refer to them as 'accounts' rather than 'users'
ukdm 15y ago
I believe the 170 million refers to the average number of users who connect and use the service every month. The 600+ million is total accounts.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- panacea 15y ago
  For what it's worth, there are 27,999,404 people connected at the moment (according to my Skype application).
nikcub 15y ago
If you look at the SEC IPO filing[1], the most recent numbers (Dec 2010) are as follows: * 663M registered accounts * 145M connected users * 8M paying users The 170M number is the most recent update of the 145M connected users number. They define 'connected users' as active within a financial quarter I have spent the past few hours reading through the SEC filing. Skype is still growing very strongly[3], especially in the key metrics of active (connected) users and paying users (both up 30%) I think this is a great deal and will work out as well for Microsoft as PayPal did for eBay. See my comment in the other thread about that[2] As I mentioned in that thread, Skype is not profitable only because they wrote down assets and acquisition costs to the tune of over $350M. Within Microsoft it will profit near $500M this year (my back-of-the-napkin sums by projecting out the old revenue figures with the new growth figures). A PE of 17-19 is not a bad buy, considering the strength of the brand and the large user base. Skype is probably the largest non-browser web/net application, and likely the second largest social graph after Facebook. What will be interesting now is the question of if Microsoft will work with Facebook on Skype, or use it as a platform to compete with Facebook. [1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1498209/000119312511056174/ds1a.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1498209/0001193125110... [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531885 [3] From their filing: "We have significantly increased both our free and paying users, growing our average monthly connected users by 38% and average monthly paying users by 19%, from the three months ended December 31, 2009 to the three months ended December 31, 2010."
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  Really only 8 million paying users? That sounds very low... given it is the only online company other than adwords with my credit card details.
  - nikcub 15y ago
    8.8M that made a transaction in that quarter, which if you project forward with the current numbers would equate to 5.8% of active users making a payment not bad in terms of a freemium conversion rate and I think some of it can be explained with: * credits now have a longer expiry date, so you can bulk purchase and hoard credit * US and Canada calling became free * negative network effect of more people using skype = less people that you require the dialout feature to reach

by portman 15y ago

JacobAldridge 15y ago

It's a really good question - I made the note elsewhere [1] that I was really surprised at 663 million users, because that would make Skype more popular than Facebook (by measurements of popularity that don't include swearing the calls that start glitching ten minutes in). 170 million I can believe more readily. It could just be the difference between users and registered accounts (I know several people who've set up Skype 4-5 times over the years, using it rarely and then creating a new account on a new machine when they need to use it again). [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531626 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531626

nikcub 15y ago
Facebook has 650M active users. They always measure and cite active users, to their credit they do not fudge around with the numbers in their PR Skype is 170M active (quarterly, Facebook is monthly), and 680M total registered. A lot more people have given Skype their payment details than have Facebook - which results in Skype monetizing a lot better (but still not awesome monetization - yet, but it is improving). Edit: Facebook has never published total registered, see http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics It is difficult to apples v apples with skype + facebook since their methodologies vary, but it seems that the fb active user base is ~3x Skype
- codeup 15y ago
  How many registered users does FB have in total?
  - nikcub 15y ago
    I went back as far as I could, and Facebook never released total registered users. It wouldn't be relevant since fan pages, product pages, apps etc. are all in the same namespace, and there would be a lot of spam and dev accounts I remember reading a blog post where somebody tried to calculate it by enumerating user ID's, but he didn't come to a clear conclusion. the FB key numbers are 650M active per month, 50% of that active per day. I wish other companies were as simple and transparent with their own stats PR - instead of nonsense like 'messages processed per fortnight', 'total logins', etc. etc.
- danieldk 15y ago
  How does one count users? I previously used a Skype account, but now I share a Skype phone with my girlfriend and her account. I'd guess there are plenty of families with one Skype account.
  - nikcub 15y ago
    with skype all they do is look at unique logins per financial quarter, so in your scenario (and I assume it is common, because I have my own family members doing the same thing) it will count as a single user perhaps they should adjust their terminology and refer to them as 'accounts' rather than 'users'

ukdm 15y ago

I believe the 170 million refers to the average number of users who connect and use the service every month. The 600+ million is total accounts.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
panacea 15y ago
For what it's worth, there are 27,999,404 people connected at the moment (according to my Skype application).

nikcub 15y ago

If you look at the SEC IPO filing[1], the most recent numbers (Dec 2010) are as follows: * 663M registered accounts * 145M connected users * 8M paying users The 170M number is the most recent update of the 145M connected users number. They define 'connected users' as active within a financial quarter I have spent the past few hours reading through the SEC filing. Skype is still growing very strongly[3], especially in the key metrics of active (connected) users and paying users (both up 30%) I think this is a great deal and will work out as well for Microsoft as PayPal did for eBay. See my comment in the other thread about that[2] As I mentioned in that thread, Skype is not profitable only because they wrote down assets and acquisition costs to the tune of over $350M. Within Microsoft it will profit near $500M this year (my back-of-the-napkin sums by projecting out the old revenue figures with the new growth figures). A PE of 17-19 is not a bad buy, considering the strength of the brand and the large user base. Skype is probably the largest non-browser web/net application, and likely the second largest social graph after Facebook. What will be interesting now is the question of if Microsoft will work with Facebook on Skype, or use it as a platform to compete with Facebook. [1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1498209/000119312511056174/ds1a.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1498209/0001193125110... [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531885 [3] From their filing: "We have significantly increased both our free and paying users, growing our average monthly connected users by 38% and average monthly paying users by 19%, from the three months ended December 31, 2009 to the three months ended December 31, 2010."

hessenwolf 15y ago
Really only 8 million paying users? That sounds very low... given it is the only online company other than adwords with my credit card details.
- nikcub 15y ago
  8.8M that made a transaction in that quarter, which if you project forward with the current numbers would equate to 5.8% of active users making a payment not bad in terms of a freemium conversion rate and I think some of it can be explained with: * credits now have a longer expiry date, so you can bulk purchase and hoard credit * US and Canada calling became free * negative network effect of more people using skype = less people that you require the dialout feature to reach