• MuppetMaster on 50 million Skype Names Registered

  Indeed, I do recognize that most of us more active users are in the extreme minority. But the truth is that you have:

  - Users that sign up once and then never use it after an initial try
  - Users that sign-up and then forget their username password and sign-up for another
  - Users that register multiple names for family members that then never use them
  - etc
  - etc

  These are shall we say 'casual' users that make up the bulk of the userbase.

  An additional element to consider is how could Skype have added 5 million additional 'users' and yet the number of simultaneous users in that timeframe has barely budged? That alone should indicate a significant disparity.

  The point is that the media and the bloggers have a duty, if they are to be taken seriously, to provide a real analysis, as opposed to cheerleading the Skype hype machine.

• Phil Wolff on 50 million Skype Names Registered

  MuppetMaster, you are what I would call a power user. You enjoy digging deep and mastering a product.

  Do you think everyone in the world is like you? Not even close. Most people use ten percent of the features of any product, if they're lucky. Aside from the kids who grew up churning IDs as they churn social networks, most people have never even heard of the idea. Do you know how many people don't know how to do a spell check in Microsoft Word after 15 years of use? Or run a Monte Carlo model in Excel?

  This truism spans all products and markets, online and off. Including Skype. For example, there are no more than a few hundred people using the developer forums, and around 50k regular readers of Skype Journal. Out of a population of 50 million? We're in a tiny, fractional minority who only increase the number of IDs in circulation a little bit, especially when we're talking about the large influx of newbies.

  This behavior may change, especially if Skype makes multiple ID, profile, and persona management more convenient.

• MuppetMaster on 50 million Skype Names Registered

  Indeed, I have multiple (it is a secret how many) usernames, as do most of the users I know. Where do you get such shoddy journalistic skills?

• Rick on 50 million Skype Names Registered

  According to Jean, there's about 16 actual Skype users. :-)

• niji on 50 million Skype Names Registered

  where do you get the data from that multiple registrations of skype is not a high percentage?

  skype needs to allow multiple alias, with the abililty to either appear off line for some alias, or, allow multiple instances to be running simultaneously.

  SYPE BEING A EURO ENTITY IS MOVING LIKE MOLASSES IN KEEPING UP WITH THE NEEDS. GIZMO WILL OVERCOME IF SKYPE DOESNT GET IN GEAR NOW.
  

• Jean Mercier on 50 million Skype Names Registered

  You say "The number of people with more than one Skype name is neglible". Are you sure?
  Don't tell Jaan, but i registered 12 Skypenames (from which i really know the password), and only three are used regularly: one at home, my business account and a "test-account".

  The others are two for my sportclub, some variations of names for my kids (i have 3, one is used but id didn't count it in the "twelve"), one more for my own when i retire from business, ...

  And i know several people who forgot their password and created a new account!

• continued in the Skype Journal Comment River: 200 fresh comments

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