Microsoft to acquire Skype
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Microsoft to acquire Skype
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Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#2The official announcement. I wonder how interoperability between various VOIP solutions will turn out with MS on board.
I am one of these dreamer of a multiprotocol VOIP solution. Like emails actually.
Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#3Can 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) 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?
Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#4The official announcement. I wonder how interoperability between various VOIP solutions will turn out with MS on board. I am one of these dreamer of a multiprotocol VOIP solution. Like emails actually.
Or telephones.
Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#5Can 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 ) 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 "connect…
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).
Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#6Can 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 ) 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 "connect…
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.
Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#7Can 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 ) 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 "connect…
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]
Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#8Can 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 ) 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 "connect…
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/1498209/0001193125110...
[2] 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."
Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#9Why is it that I like Skype less on the other side of this announcement? It's not that I'm anti-MSFT; I just like communications software like Skype to be vendor neutral, competing on innovation and working to keep as many platforms + devices as possible at parity. I don't want someone to use Skype as leverage to try to get me to switch platforms. I'm more likely to drop Skype and be left looking for an alternative.
Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype
#10Can 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 ) 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 "connect…
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…
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
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