Updated with response from Skype: If you are one of Skype’s many users who use the service to make a living or to talk to your remote users, then you may be straight out of luck. The service this morning is down and the outage is affecting millions of users. So far there is no word from Skype or no comment on their blog as such. On Twitter, Skype posted: “Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype – we’re investigating, and we’re sorry for the disruption to your conversations.”
Sorry, not good enough! Skype is one of the key applications of the modern web. According to a recent study, Skype accounts for about 0.57 percent of all Internet traffic. It has become a major telephony provider. For the first six months of 2010, Skype had 6.4 mbillion billing minutes versus 10.7 billion minutes during entire 2009. Skype logged 88.4 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes during first six months of 2010, versus 113 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes in 2009. Clearly, it is already a hit with consumers, and over past few years it has become part of the economic fabric for startups and small businesses around the world. I am not sure we can comprehend the productivity cost of this outage.
Here is a visual interpretation of the Skype outage and its impact, via Phil Wolff at Skype Journal. He points out that in terms of impact this is a much bigger outage than Skype outage in 2007.
In theory, Skype, which is based on peer-to-peer networking technology shouldn’t see an outage. But that is not really the case – the company has a massive infrastructure that it uses for purposes such as authentication and linking to the traditional phone networks. It is not clear why the current outage happened, but it is something that makes me pause. (Updated: Skype responded. See their response at the bottom of this post.)
The outage comes at a time when Skype is starting to ask larger corporations for their business. If I am a big business, I would be extremely cautious about adopting Skype for business, especially in the light of this current outage. I think Skype is at a critical point in its life – its investors are trying to shepherd the company towards the big corporate customers. The hiring of new CEO Tony Bates from Cisco Systems (s CSCO) is only firms my belief that Skype is slowly starting to ignore its core and passionate user base who are happy to spend money on its products – consumers and small businesses.
More importantly, Skype is facing increasing competition from new services, many of them having shown that they can keep pace with the Internet telephony behemoth. It is not six years ago when Skype had an advantage of riding on the back of the file-sharing service Kazaa to attract new users. In the age of Twitter and Facebook, word of mouth has taken on a whole new meaning. The recent launch and fast growth of Viber, a no name free VoIP company, shows that Skype can’t rest on its laurels.
More importantly – it needs to ensure that it is doesn’t go down. Even for a few minutes.
Skype isn’t a network like a conventional phone or IM network – instead, it relies on millions of individual connections between computers and phones to keep things up and running. Some of these computers are what we call ‘supernodes’ – they act a bit like phone directories for Skype. If you want to talk to someone, and your Skype app can’t find them immediately (for example, because they’re connecting from a different location or from a different device) your computer or phone will first try to find a supernode to figure out how to reach them.
Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available. Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype. As Skype relies on being able to maintain contact with supernodes, it may appear offline for some of you.
What are we doing to help? Our engineers are creating new ‘mega-supernodes’ as fast as they can, which should gradually return things to normal. This may take a few hours, and we sincerely apologise for the disruption to your conversations. Some features, like group video calling, may take longer to return to normal.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
I love it when Geeks flip out during Outages.
This affects my business tremendously because I converse with a ton of my customers on Skype. As much as some want to play this down, if it keeps up it will cost us and many others a lot of money.
I am not a geek by the way:)
You get the service for free.
That’s your fault.
Why does Vio think you get the service for free.
I pay more to Skype than I pay my Adsl provider.
It may well be the case for John too!
I have a phone number that rings on Skype on my laptop, and for that i pay every month.
People need to understand that not all is free on the Internet, and the companies like Skype who get hundreds of millions of revenue from their customers must provide a matching level of service.
I don’t get the service for free either… I pay for my SkypeIn, I pay for SkypeOut, and I rely on it to communicate with family members overseas and with some customers…
After reading through all the posts, and since I deal with different people and personalities almost every day [I am sure you can guess what business field I am in], most of you guys/gals that don’t pay for Skype or pay for Skype, I predict
A. You will get angry enough and ask for credit while threatening to cancel which is a bluff behind the scenes
B. Complain to Skype support, like that will get you anywhere. It may to an extent. LOL
C. Say that you will go with another provider, then cave, and end up staying.
By the way, You will go through another outage. 60% chance that they will have another one within 3 months.
D. You will use another service and try to migrate your customers, but will most likely fail because people DON’T LIKE CHANGE.
YOU WILL COME BACK TO SKYPE. It is only human nature.
E. Continue to vent to yourself and others on multiple communication tools like twitter, facebook, gigaom, the Skype support site, etc
F. You will try to forget this ever happened and be a “carefree business owner”, but;
By the way, You will go through another outage. 60% chance that they will have another one within 3 months.
G. What ever business processes you have integrated with Skype that you cannot do like, communicate; LOL, you will blame it on Skype.
That’s funny. Reminds me of the time one of the Blizzard servers went down and millions of WoW pansies simultaneously had a stroke
@ Rs:
LOLOL To completely made my day. I reposted that comment Facebook. You sir/madam, win 100 internetz. Best comment I’ve seen in a long time.
Jesus. Why did you even make this article? Skype has been down for maybe 50 minutes. 50 minutes… and you’re blabbing about how it can’t be trusted and about how it’s let down millions of people?
You pretentious little prick.
Nice manners, mr. anonymous
It’s not like he isn’t right. It was still working less than 10 minutes ago here. Has it occurred to you they might be having technical difficulties, as opposed to “wanting more money”.
Does your business do everything perfectly every single time?
It’s been down for at least 3 or 4 hours, so don’t be an asshole. Imagine if you showed up to work and you couldn’t talk to any of your customers. You’d lose patience pretty fast.
50 minutes? If only. I haven’t been able to use my skype accounts on various locations and various systems, at all.
One success was to connect directly to an already open chat window from last night, but that was it. Nothing else. I can not even login and it’s been nearly 6 hours.
50 minutes. I wish!
Anonymous, what part of “over past few years it has become part of the economic fabric for startups and small businesses around the world. I am not sure we can comprehend the productivity cost of this outage.” didn’t you get? Some people’s livelihood is connected through Skype. Sure, there are other ways, but Skype is a great way to keep in touch with clients and connections. More professional than Twitter or Facebook.
Besides, it’s not like San Diego Comic Con’s website going down, or World of Warcraft going down for a couple of days. Those are luxuries.
I agree too. I am connected to my girlfriend through skype and it is very frustrating for me to sit here and not talk to her.
I love Comic Con by the way
Wow. Comic Con AND a girlfriend. Well done, sir.
I agree. For a service as innovative and free for many applications, I think we should be grateful and allow Skype to take us into the next generation. Are we disappointed, sure, but do the majority of us understand? And will most of us go back who currently use Skype? Yes. I hardly think one outage is going to bring society and Skype to its knees.
Lesson learned…move on.
Did you write about BP, by chance, Om?
Skype is only FREE for skype-to-skype calls not as a VIoP provider, you have to pay for that which many do especially businesses.
no, it’s been down for a few hours already and is affecting my business!!!!
Totaly agree.
This could happen to everyone.
Need to be patient, usually such global outages could be fixed fast.
Block this person!
1) Uses non-constructive language, to say the least.
2) His problem may have been 50 minutes, but I’ve
been out of Skype for over 10 hrs now, and am in the middle of an international collaboration.
That said: this service has been free of charge so far.
And it’s been one of the truly great break-throughs of the 21-st century in terms of international communication.
It’s been a blesssing !
Still, no reason to go name-calling for either side.
Blackberry still has massive centralization prone to go down and take mass users with it. But the network effect isd what sets bb and skype apart. Assuming this is a glitch it won’t really have an impact. But sdomeoner somewhere is not having a good morning at skype.
I agree. I have lived through many Blackberry outages but there aren’t as acutely felt.
I think Skype is too big and too integral to our web lives and these outages have a price/impact.
Agreed. The assumption we mistakenly make is that these large companies have massive redundancy and fail safe systems in place such than an outtage, however unlikely, would only impact a small batch of customers. As we’re seeing here, and with the BB outtages, that this is often not the case. Facebook went down and they had to “reboot the server” recently. The thing I like about Vonage is that it offers a fail safe routing # that re-routes calls to that number in the event of an outtage. It’s a nice little feature. Sometimes simple solutions are enough to appease the audience. Skype really should consider such a solution.
Is your other name John Wayne – if not stop shooting from the hip.
I appreciate your outrage, Om, but in the end, every cloud-based service is going to have outages from time to time. That’s just the nature of things. This is why many people, like John Dvorak for example, argue against relying on the cloud too much.
But frankly, it isn’t just the cloud that this happens to. Airplanes break, and flights get canceled. Cars break down, and subways get delayed – people miss face to face meetings this way. Anything technological is going to fail at some point or another. Expecting something – anything – to work 100% of the time just isn’t realistic.
And no, I don’t own stock in Skype 😛 I’m just sayin’…
Agree, Verizon has trouble with there landlines, T-1s all the time yet people still buy.
I do agree though Skype’s response is just like traditional companies which means it sucks. They need to not aspire to being Verizon but a Zappos.
They pushed out two messages pretty quickly on Twitter, what exactly are you expecting? A by the minute update? A live webcam watching their engineers stressing out?
+1 –
live long enough in Tech. world and you know – nothing is 100% fault proof (even a distributed system like skype.
all in all i think they manage their growth in subscribers and MoU fairly well (remember the 5 9th threshold?)
(on a side note i find this is an interesting lesson to learn about the soft spots of such architecture)
Well said Nergol.
Om Malik, I appreciate your outrage as well. But the outage happens with everything and every company. Not achieving the absolute 100% up-time is not enough grounds to think Skype may lose grounds with businesses.
Thanks all.
Amazing number of ignorant geeks – including those who “don’t” own stock in Skype.
I imagine Skype is sweating the outage especially since they’re in process of preparing an IPO.
I love it when Geeks, 99% of whom PAY NOTHING for the service, flip out during outages.
How do you know that I am in that 99%. Frankly, we do a lot of business on Skype and it is my main phone resource and I spend a bundle on it. And no, no one flipping out. Of course, that is something you might choose to imagine 🙂
Lawl, this scrub right here.
Seems like the 99% are flipping out. Get on Yakity, god stop whining and use other types of communication.
Oovoo, Ventrilo, Team speak. god stop blabbing bout nonsense.
I love how most people just want to complain guess they have nothing better to do. I see why you posted this your reporting a big Issue like you I use it for work and run my business on the back of it. but i am also old enough to remember the Ma Bell of the old days when just digging around would put 1000 phones down so i have a backup like land line and google voice so something like this wont affect me dont know why more people dont and yes i am a old biker geek!!! LOL
Keep up the great work Malik
Is it just or am I the only one who “it needs to ensure that it is doesn’t go down.” doesn’t make sense to?
Completely ridiculous. The server went down less than 10 minutes ago. It’s not like it’s a complete disaster. Has it occurred to you that they might be going through technical difficulties?
Om, I think after 6 years of near perfect service, you could cut them a break. Facebook has suffered more major outages these past two weeks. I’m sure the people at Skype want their product up and running again with even better failsafes than better, and I am sure they are doing this with as much passion, if not more, than you have for Skype.
Is it alright to be upset? Ya. But to say they are completely unreliable, and to essentially burn them at the stake? No.
Skype Mobile is working fine.
Thanks Skypo…
You have cost our business headaches today, cancelled skype meetings and more.
dumping skype and moving to another service.
bad boy skype, now go to your room and pray.
sincerely,
non skype user as of today
Grow up you pathetic little girl.
Like so many of the other posters on here today, you should always have a contingency plan, did you miss that day at school, and not complain about a service that has only gone down once since its conception.
I expect that Skype will be glad to be rid of a sour faced bitch such as yourself anyway so get a life and a different VoIP provider, twat.
Salesforce.com again…. ah yes, what fun. Are we to blame this on “St. Julian” too??
frankly i’m glad that skype went down. teaches people not to rely too much on one form of communication. Redundancy is key to survival in the tech world.
visit http://www.ephman.com (it’s a crazy blog) all ad $$ is donated to #help find a cure for #melanoma #cancer. just visit and you’ve donated! ok fine shameless plug.
I hope this was just a one time problem and is fixed asap. I’d like to hear a detailed report of the issue in the future though, I have a few business customers with the intention to switch their phone system to skype. I don’t know the full extend of the outage, but if forwarding the skype number to a landline or cellphone is also affected, then I would not know of any other way for the business to still receive calls. Outages happen and regular phone service providers are not save from that as well, but I never lost service longer than a few hours, unless a hurricane offered as a visit. When forwarding still works, then there is somehow a safety net for phone calls still to be received. Skype vs. ATT (2 phone numbers) is 12$ vs. 268$ (already haggled down from 600+), and when this really was a rare case, then well worth it.
Om, normarily i enjoy your articles and you’re clearly a writer worth reading.
This, however, is a disgrace. 50 minutes outage by a company that’s led VOIP and GIVEN it away for free, without bullshit or hassles for as long as i can remember.
Have a word my friend and make an apology. Your indignation is as best pretentious, at worst a prissy little fit from some jumped up shit at a site that has traffic but could disappear tomorrow and no one would give a f**k
wow you sound like a wanker. relax dude. you sound more pissed off about his article then he is about skype going down. breath in out in out…
Skype is not a free service!!! at least not for the following:
– have a number that people can call
– call land lines or mobile phones
Skype made 740 000 000 $ of revenue in 2009.
So CUSTOMERS have the right to be pissed off, especially if it hurts their business
In the end, we’re still talking about technology here and things break sometimes.
I think you’re much too critical…especially since you are commenting without ANY of the facts.
A portion of Skype service is peer-to-peer, but it’s login facilities are not. Look at the phrasing of their twitter remark.
well I am extremely disappointed because just today I decided to actually use Skype for once and get call credits because my flight in Europe has been delayed 4 days and it seems that I will almost be spending a not-so-good christmas alone. Now that there are some flight changes and that I just got back home to contact my relatives and get the airlines sorted out, amid this european airport chaos, Skype is down!
I cannot even imagine how it would be for business relying on heavy communications. My 50 minute calls to airlines across the pond would be extremely expensive if done from a regular telephone.
Keep with it FTU. It is simply the best VoIP service by far and while it is annoying, especially if you’re waiting for a plane that you were supposed to be on days ago, it’s worth waiting for. It looks like it’s up and running again now anyway as I have my lovely green tick back!! =) Stick with it! You won’t be disappointed, I promise.
I was a bit surprised to not be able to use my phone this morning (I subscribe to skype unlimited calls and I have a landline through skype) but it cleared up reasonably quickly…..looking at this historically, this is barely a glitch….want to go back to verizon?! I don’t think so. I am saving a fortune using skype and I am sure they will work this out. It can only get better.
Although I agree it’s frustrating and it is making me take a second look at how much I rely on the cloud (Skype, Google Docs, etc.) this is the first time Skype has been down for me in years.
I had to move one Skype to Skype interview from today to tomorrow so it’s not the end of the world.
It’s a great free service. Reminds me of the folks who freak out about the Twitter fail whale. We just need Lighten up, Francis.
Now if it starts happening all the time then I would agree there is something serious going on and lets freak out but for now they’ve earned my benefit of the doubt.
The poor communication from Skype was my only gripe. I was re-booting thinking it was me. Checked their site nada. Their forums are history. So I had to go to Twitter to confirm I wasn’t alone. 🙂
Yes peer to peer but first you need to know when “joe_user” is located. i.e. There is some server infrastructure for authentication and directory and online status of users. Also a DNS-like scheme so users can find each other as their IP addresses change.
This is really unprofessional, just not right mate.
Now the outage is in its 5th hour and no apparent end in sight. It seems that Om wasn’t over-reacting 🙂
And now their support web site is down. It gets worse…
Seriously, most people don’t even pay for this shit.
So for anyone to be having a pussy wax about an outage which skype have pissing apologized for is a little bit whack, frankly.
The tone of this hissy little article veers towards twatty. But that’s just my opinion. i don’t work in media and i’m not a massive prick.
You sound like a massive prick. Hey genius, does it occur to you that the people complaining DO pay for the service. millions of skype users pay for the service you ignorant prick.
I agree that this is completly BS! I know about 75 army wives who would agree right now.. skype has been down for a few hours for me.. I was hoping to talk to my husband tonight but since skype seems to be a failure that wont be happening..
Anyone for bringing back the Bell system? .
It may be cheap (for most free) which just means in this case that we’re getting WAY more than you pay for.
This also makes for a nice trigger for the net neutrality debate: If I pay for my Skype, should mine survive while the vast unwashed go “best-effort?”
Discuss…
I for one, am glad that I found this article. And to those who are giving the author crap, please chill out. I use Skype every day, and I’m very upset at the outage. But I’m not a geek, and I’m not “flipping out” for no reason. The reason I’m upset is because my fiance lives overseas and Skype is the only way I have to see him in person until we get married. So of course I’m upset. But to those giving him grief for his article, just stop. He probably has a legitimate reason to be upset as well. Thanks Om, it’s nice to finally know that the problem isn’t on my end, and that I’m not the only one who’s having to deal with this.
Indeed.
My fiance is 6200 miles away, she has access to a computer terminal with only skype, and only once every 2 weeks.
I bet noone can guess which day that is?
Overreacting just a little? At tad? A smidgen?
Spare us the drama, please. ”Even for a few minutes”… C’MON! What are you expecting from a service that offers the best VOIP experience so far (largely for no fee)? a 99.9999% SLA? And it’s not like other systems (landline or mobile networks) offer better availability. People will survive, especially those small startups the writer’s worried about. There is still email while Skype is down for… what? a few hours. Take a chill pill, man.
An update was just posted at http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/12/skype_downtime_today.html
Skype apologizes for the inconvenience caused to their users and we’re sorry for the disruption to your conversations. Please follow @skype on Twitter for updates.
if you use skype as a free service like 3/4 of the users of skype do then you have no say about the service being down for less then an hour and I say to you GTFO if you complain.
Just like everything in IT you should always have a backup plan.
If your a paying customer then you mite have the right to complain but shit happens get over it!
Anyone with an ounce of business acumen could not possibly rely on a free VOIP service to communicate with their customers….
It rarely goes down and I have found it extremely reliable for personal use but I would not even consider it for regular business comms.
Read up on the Skype Net Neutrality movement: skypeneutrality.blogspot.com
Last outage (the first one since Skype started) was August 2007 and lasted only a few hours. I think that is an amazing good uptime for a free service.
Man made stuff tends to break – we sometimes forget that. Use alternatives for the critical jobs and enjoy a few hours doing other things.
skype is being hacked—i have malwarebytes and it keeps blocking a potential threat—-so they do have problems larger than just being down.
It’s December 22, 12:40 PM, still have no service, too bad 🙁
my iphone 4 still on for an ~hour in skype connecting, yep, drained battery from 70% to 37% 🙁
Flipping out. This has a serious impact on our ability to communicate as a remote team, but is also a lesson to have back up services installed and to the ready.
10 best skype alternatives:
http://bit.ly/21LEjz
Whoever they are, I will creep back to Skype like a little puppy when they are back. I will however, tread carefully with my dependence on the service. Come on Skype.
@Om – The trolls are wrong, this seriously hurts my personal and professional lives. 5 minutes or 50… Hope you are keeping well. 😉
I may be a young gun, but, I like telling the truth, it may hurt, so…
If your a business owner then your should make proper business decisions. The first of which, is to have a secondary if the primary fails and a tertiary if the secondary fails. The reason is because it is your businesses’ legacy and perception to customers that is on the line. If skype goes down, it doesn’t matter, your business is on the hook.
AND PLEASE FOR GODS’ SAKE, don’t tell your customers that you can’t do the work or “communicate” because Skype is the problem. Don’t blame it on Skype. As a business you have options. Many customers and I laugh at businesses and owners that make statements like that.
@Malik and @Pavan K — Jennifer Crilly’s statement is right. You don’t know what your doing.
All you posters that actually admitted to paying for Skype not only made yourself feel bad, but feel stupid as well. IT IS A VERY CONSISTENT SERVICE, but; I don’t pay for facebook and when it has outages and it will continue to have them, I will not be worried. I don’t suffer from internet withdrawal.
Frankly I hope it continues to have outages, maybe some time off the computer will get you guys to do other tasks and find other ways to communicate with your customers better.
You know what’s really weird? I started looking up these articles because I couldn’t connect to Skype and everything else seemed to be working. Now, I’m connected again, but I seem to be the only one. None of my friends are online and there are always a few. The articles are still showing it’s down, the links you say are down still are. So, I’m the only one that is currently connected. That makes me feel special. I have Skype all to myself.
I guess I spoke too soon, because I’m back down again with the rest of them.
Ceej, I think I’m working, too. Maybe we should talk to each other since we seem to be the only two not-pissed-off people with a connection … wait, oh, never mind, mine is back down. 😉
I know, Judi. I was up for a little over an hour myself, but I’m back down again. I have to go to work now, anyway, and I wouldn’t be comfortable giving my Skype information on a third party’s website. Especially in a manner that the general public can see. Have patience. It’ll be up sooner or later.
It’s 13:17, still cannot connect, almost 4 hours already
Good thing is I still have Google Voice (probably can have the same problem), and fortunately POTS (land line) from AT&T, hail to the wire !
14:32 US, pacific time, still down
common, can you guys just ask everyone not to try to use skype for “whatever” time needed to fix it?
The main problem is that Skype admitted “…many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype …”. Should Skype care quality and not stupid and useless “features”! Several changes in User Interface for worst user friendly and space consuming mods? I remember how Skype 3.x was sensibly better than V4 and V5!
It does not look like “features”, but a server problem instead.
And that is a perfect example of “cloud” computing outage, so where (how) we can go from there?
Can I has redundancies ? plz
It is now 4:21 central time. And still no connection. I hope it comes up soon so i can connect with a buddy of mine that’s leaving for NZ for about a year. C’mon skype get with it.
Don’t know why anyone is flipping out. Considering Skype is somewhere in the ballpark of 99.9% up-time during the last 3 years. It it too hard for people to use another means of communication during the downtime?
Does Skype have an official SLA for it’s service? If it doesn’t (or it does but it doesn’t meet your requirements) AND Skype is critical to your business, you would be a fool to not have a disaster plan with a viable, working alternative service.
I don’t understand why everyone is flipping out. Skype has had 99.9999999% up-time for the last 3 years. You can’t ask for better service than that. This is also the digital age. There are other ways to communicate during the down-time, like e-mail for instance, or maybe a cell-phone.
The outage has made me realize that I need to start a support group for Skype-aholics. My name is Tom and I am a Skype-aholic. Om, I think we need a 12 step system that helps people understand the importance of redundancy and backup in case of catastrophic meltdowns.
Om – Peace – Peace – Peace
hey Skype Down Twitter Explosion – 2010, 12, 22 watch videos here http://www.videorecent.com/video/skype-down-twitter-explosion-2010-12-22/sy_Dw8q5dQE.html
Nobody is perfect!
Skype should have a backup plan, some kind of redundancy. After all we are so dependent on their service but weren’t smart enough to develop our own backup and redundancy plans for our business.
Your article sounds like a whine-fest, and makes you sound completely uneducated to not only technology, but to how the world works in general. Things break. Hardline phone systems go down, power outages happen, servers crash. Welcome to the real world.
If you weren’t smart enough to have a contingency plan for the failure of a technology that’s so crucial to your business, then you’re an idiot. How many of you don’t run data backups because everything: “should just work”? Email, cell phones, Twitter and Facebook pages for your company. They can all be used to communicate with with your clients, and notify them when there’s a problem.
“For the first six months of 2010, Skype had 6.4 million billing minutes versus 10.7 billion minutes during entire 2009”
Is that supposed to be 6.4 billion reflecting over half the number of total billing minutes of the prior year were used in the first half of this year, or was that 6.4 million as in a HUGE decrease which directly conflicts with the purpose of the paragraph which dictates that the increase in use of Skype has grown?
This type of error is “not acceptable”…no one is allowed to make a mistake…ever.
thanks for a nice article Om
the service is still down for me, but at least i can get idea about whats going on from your post.
and to other very Great criticizers here, dont be assholes attacking a guy for making a reasonable point, even if it dont mach with yours
Oh..that explain me why i cant see green spot of available. So skype is down. hope it will be fixed soon bcos i like to use skype for video call. ^^
I’m can’t get too upset considering their overall reliability, but this defintiely not good for Skype. How many people have discovered Google Talk during this outage? Windows Live Messenger and other IM clients also support VoIP. Many users already have plenty of other VoIP options already on their PCs and they simply haven’t discovered them yet. Now they have a reason.
Combine that with Google Voice’s ability to reforward a phone number and it is really easy for a user to redirect their Skype activity to another provider with little difficulty if they’ve considered a back up plan in the past.
And if it’s business critical tool, there should be a back up plan in plance.
It’s been down for me for the past 7 hours and I still can’t connect.
well, i can’t say that it’s not an inconvenience. Skype is the sole means I have for real-time conversation with my boyfriend as we live thousands of miles away and cannot call each other using cell phones. but i’m just glad it wasn’t just me experiencing problems and that it’ll be fixed before the weekend (hopefully) so I can have my boyfriend fix.
And it’s been down 10 hours for me now. Occasionally I get a connection but it kicks me back off.
If all you ‘I’m loosing money’, “I am in the middle of an international collaboration” guys were actually business savy enough to make money or be collaborative, you would have thought of alternatives and / or back ups to Skype.
I have offices in Sydney, Los Angeles and London. We use Skype for the most part, but everyone has an iChat account & Messenger account along with (and this may cause some mass hysteria) a desk or cellular phone.
ISP down? No Skype. Computer crashed? NO Skype. Skype down? No, errrr…. Skype.
Those of us that planned accordingly will just use Google voice / phone / smoke signals until it comes back up again and patiently wait for Skype to fix itself.
Mr Gigaom – your rhetoric and doom mongering is a bit like saying that all aviation is dangerous because one plane crashed. Breathe some breadth into your commentary, dear chap.
Mr. Andrew,
If your point was to brag about multiple offices in high places, or if it was that you’re smart enough to have a backup plan; you made it well. Cheers.
Coming back to the topic, I think the focus of this article was possibly opening up avenues for positive criticism which HELPS a company like Skype build better failsafe plans and a better product.
This when placed in the context of existing (not as savvy as yourself) users makes sense as most do tend to rely on Skype as their primary (and often, only) mode of VOIP communication.
I guess it would pay you to be kind to yourself and think before you shoot.
Cheers again.
Narayan,
I read and re-read your response and have come to the conclusion that you are utterly misguided for the following reasons:
1. Indication of my office locations was to show geographical spread & importance of global communication, not to show off – why would I choose a crappy forum like this to do that?
2. This article is about as far removed from ‘helping Skype’ as you could get. Whilst I admire your ‘glass half full’ notions, remember this is some crass wannabe tech blogger having a swipe at an organisation that has achieved significantly greater things than they ever will. Perhaps the old adage of “those who can’t, teach” should be changed to “those who can’t, Blog”.
3. Re: your sarcastic comments about my relative savvy-ness does no credit to yourself. If you are smart enough to know how to use a blog, one would assume you know the limitations of the internet and plan accordingly. Skype is not the only VoIP service on the face of the earth – in fact as one guy mentioned it’s banned in the UAE.
Toodle pip,
Dibers
Of course this enormity of this crisis is huge, but if you seriously think about it, Skype’s best interests are in providing an optimal level of service for its users, both paying and non-paying.
If a company the size of Skype with so many people depending on it and one that has been around for so long – has made this accidental mistake, can you imagine what the smaller, newer competitors could be overlooking, with their lack of mass users and experience?
Skype will learn from this issue, and it will become a cornerstone, turning point for them and a reason to provide even better, support and service to the community at large.
I say, yes Skype is in a tight spot right now, but they should be measured not in this t outage, but in how they get out of this situation and ensure this doesn’t occur again. That is the true measure of a successful, reliable company that has self respect and integrity.
– Brad Powar.
As the old saying goes “you get what you pay for”. I am using a VoIP Service for the past 4 years and have not been down once. Do your research before you put your business on the line. You may pay a few dollars more a month but you can be rest assured that you will not have an outage. What service am I using for my business you ask!!! UniVoIP
Who are they?
The guy running skype has no clue about consumer products. He led R&D for enterprise switches at cisco, per his bio.
Expect more screwups.
They clearly do not perceive themselves as a telecom company.
You can’t be the same Vito Leoni who criticised Google’s business model vis DNS look up?
If you are, jump back in your box and be quiet, the grown ups are talking.
20 hours without skype not even letting me log in 🙁
Hoping this will pass.
I’m back up again, but I don’t see anyone else online, so I guess I’m the only one again, and can’t expect this to last.
Same here. From time to time, I get the connection, don’t see anybody around and then lose it again.
No. I didn’t lose the connection this time. This time the rest of us joined me within the hour, so I hope you had the same thing.
How did you guys communicate before Skype? oh, that’s right the phone… you know its still available right?? I have skype, a home phone and a mobile… Guess what, I can still talk to who ever I want, when ever I want. Stop being tight arses and complaining when your free / cheap communications systems fail.
If your $30K car wont start do you go online and bitch about it or do you just catch the OTHER forms of transport?
Will I stop using skype? hell no, it has been great at bring down the cost of my other communications systems and is also better than my other communications systems.
For those of you in business and complaining, you need to think smarter not cheaper when deciding on a business plan… hire someone with some smarts if you want to survive in business.
For those of you missing loved ones, grow up! Skype has been down how long???? Geez how did we ever survive before skype. I can tell you know how to write based on all the crap in this blog so how about sending a letter?
They provide a great service 🙂 Its so sad to hear this 🙁
You put all your eggs in one basket. Basket falls down. All eggs break. It’s not the basket’s fault. It’s yours. It doesn’t matter who’s basket you put your eggs in. Business continuity of your business is your business, not the baskett you put your eggs in! If you can’t talk to your girlfriens while Skype’s falling, have yourself a backup girlfriend!
to the people who call the rest “whiners” for complaining about a supposed free service going down, stop your trolling broadband banter. this article takes the place of any real”support” or notification that a real service would offer it’s customers.
ie. look up facebook roadblock + customer support.
this new version of skype is garbage , not dependable..and probably full of security loopholes, as a matter of fact i wouldn’t be surprised if it was taken down for this reason
Malik
To blog as if Skype should never have gone down is a bit disingenous. Every technology will fail at some point. Today it was Skype’s turn… whatever the reason. An important point here is that as a Skype user, I should not have laid ALL my eggs in their basket but rather expect that this might happen and craft a backup for the day it does.
Sorry Om but if you work in tech you know that big shit sometimes happens. It’s just not possible to be up 100%. It’s far from the Twitter fail whale.
Skype is an amazing service, I’d agree they cannot afford to rest on their laurels but then I’m not sure that they are. They have brought video conferencing to the masses and it’s only going to get better.
I find this article a bit sensationalist which is quite surprising for you.
The problem isn’t small.
It’s totally big. I am just a normal user outside of my home country willing to speak with my family during holidays and , although it seems as a problem , there’s an alternative for me to fix the problem and go through the holidays without any major complains.
Although I can NOT imagine if a lot of small (or big) business have been relying on Skype. What does that mean for them now ? What about all the people that pay for the payed services over at Skype’s network ?
I am gonna take a peek at Viber. Maybe having both Viber and Skype would give a fallback. There is MagicJack too. For in and out of country calls, I use Lingo. I call Turkey for free, S. Korea, Australia, etc.
Thanks for the article and to all the comments, certainly entertained me while skype was down… At first I thought it was just me… it’s lovely to know you are not alone…
I almost had to dust off iChat, but happily, it didn’t come to that.
I’m sure that it was the CIA’s fault.
…or George W’s.
…or China’s.
…or Bill Gates’.
…or something.
Net neutrality is NOT currently in effect so what do you guys expect already.
Talk to Julius at the FCC, he can fix this.
Make the call fellers…
I dont know why all of you are freakin out cuz this is the first time this has happened sonce skype started so could you please give them a break it was one mistake.
It’s part of the industry. Moreover, machines too can fail.
I think we can cut Skype some slack here. They are still a young and growing company, and overall they maintain a high service level. I use both the free servive and the pay service and find the voice quality consistently superior to the traditional carriers. My business of 20 employees uses the service extensively to reach our international customers. People who have complained so loudly about this outage have obviously never had to deal with the Cable & Wireless monopoly in the Caribbean or Verizon who manages to bring our T1 line down for a day or two every six months.