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Microsoft to acquire Skype

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Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#61

Post by nikcub »

codeup wrote: post #15
nikcub wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). Edi…

How many registered users does FB have in total?

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.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#62

Post by code_duck »

p4bl0 wrote: post #11

> Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms. I don't personnaly use Skype for various reasons, but for the people who do, let's hope that's true.

That's certainly my concern. I have somewhere approximating zero faith that they will continue the Linux client, considering Skype themselves have essentially abandoned it, and the prospects for the other two I use, Android and Mac, seem rather dim. We do have 30 years of MS history to go by here, after all.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#63

Post by togasystems »

martinkallstrom wrote: post #12
hvs wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or telephones.

In my eyes this is Facebook's missed opportunity. Facebook is a sufficiently powerful brand to be able to negotiate exclusive deals with operators around the world to launch a VOIP phone relying on flat rate data only, replacing the address book with a subset of your social graph and SMS with Facebook Messaging. Such a move could have been very disruptive towards voice phone operators if paired with 170M desktop clie…

I completely agree with you. Facebook could of became one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world overnight. Maybe they will get the chance to buy it off of MSFT much like how eBay sold it off. Probably not.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#64

Post by dataminer »

peregrine wrote: post #45

My girlfriend has been traveling abroad and we haven't used Skype once. We just used the built in capabilities of Google Talk. Its a simple plugin for the browser, doesn't sit on my machine bugging for updates and slowing down my startup time. No dropped calls, good video quality, and simple integration.

I have been using google talk but recently switched to skype because my wife got an iphone and google talk does not work on it. Skype on iphone is really painless to use and call quality is also very good.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#65

Post by Sigma11 »

Am I the only one finding this simply amazing how Niklas and Janus managed to sell same technology/business twice?

Granted, there was an incredible mistake on eBay part not doing proper due-diligence, but pulling off what they did takes a lot of chutzpah for sure.

This most probably going as a case-study into modern economy text-books.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#66

Post by tttp »

Can anyone shed light on this: "share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers"

Are they the only one sharing that vision? Are they software companies with a vision of dumping obsolete software and products to their customers ?

Big fan of stuffing fluffy meaningless statements into each PR. This one is a keeper.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#67

Post by Dylan16807 »

nikcub wrote: post #30
hessenwolf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 =…

US and Canada calling became free? As far as I know that only happened for part of 2006. In addition to calling 1-800 numbers being free.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#68

Post by lotusleaf1987 »

Skype+Kinect+XBox actually sounds pretty cool, even WP7 seems to have some potential. I actually think MSFT made a good move and it was worth it to keep Skype out of the hands of Google/Facebook.

If I were Microsoft I would even look at buying out Pandora/Spotify/Slacker/Last.fm, Netflix, and remove the file limit on their Windows Live online storage to compete more directly with Dropbox and others--then there'd actually be incentive to use a Hotmail/Live account again and with a plethora of subscription services they could set up their own app store that would compete a bit better with iTunes and sync with Xbox Live. Something else powerful is it would be one bill for your Xbox live, online storage, email, movie rentals, games rentals (potentially), apps, music subscription, and VoIP calls.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#70

Post by panacea »

ukdm wrote: post #6
portman wrote: post #3

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 ) 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.

For what it's worth, there are 27,999,404 people connected at the moment (according to my Skype application).
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