The Big Blog

Utilizing Big Data to Unlock Innovation in Education

I'm always looking for new areas of innovation. One topic in particular that I've been keeping an eye on is big data, as this emerging area has the potential to change multiple industries and generate tremendous value.

This has already been happening in private sector industries like retail, where companies like Wal-Mart have been using predictive technologies to mine the trillions of bytes of data regarding shopper behavior it has collected to forecast what products its customers would need in different situations. For example, ahead of Hurricane Frances in 2004, Wal-Mart learned that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase seven times their normal sales rate and beer was the pre-hurricane top selling item. This resulted in stores in the path of the storm being stocked with these items, which sold quickly.

Even more interesting are new efforts in industries like education and government.

For example, at Stanford University, big data is being used to research how students learn in online classes. As Daphne Koller, a professor at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, told The New York Times last month, "In most education research, teaching methods are tested in small groups, comparing results in different classrooms. With small sample groups, research conclusions tend to be uncertain and results are often not available until tests at the end of school semesters. But in an online class of 20,000 students, whose every mouse click is tracked in real time, the research can be more definitive and more immediate."

Recently, the Obama administration announced a $200 million dollar "Big Data Research & Development Initiative" to help accelerate the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen national security, and transform teaching and learning.

Efforts like these are of most interest to us at Skype, as we believe that any acceleration to improving and modernizing teaching is a good step in the right direction.

It is our sincere hope that advances in education technology - be it big data or video calling - can help further revolutionize the way our next generation learns.

Technology is Essential to Enabling the Learning Process

"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." - John Dewey

As this presentation from the Pew Internet Organization details, regardless of what students choose to do after they are finished with their education, technology inevitably will play a role. The wealth of new software tools, media platforms and research technologies that are rapidly transforming how our society communicates can be effectively employed to educate future generations.

I've heard first-hand the stories of the positive benefits for education. Recently, students from an Englewood, NJ school district connected with students in China through a video conferencing session to test their Mandarin skills. The sessions helped immerse the students in the region's culture, letting them continually hear the language from native speakers and learning it through the benefit of real-life interactions.

Here are two major factors why technology is essential to learning:

Greater access to information and experiences - The Internet enables information democracy, providing access to classroom support materials well beyond the scope of school libraries. As a result, educators are now able to offer their students a greater variety of truly interactive exercises and experiences. Perhaps the limitations of time and money will prevent a school field trip to a museum, but using technology like Skype, teachers can connect their students with a local museum director to give a virtual tour of an exhibit.

Improved efficiencies - In the absence of technology, everyday research for classroom assignments can become a huge burden on a student's time. No more. Advanced computational tools allow students more time to focus on important conceptual tasks such as problem posing and problem solving. Additionally, technology can enable previously inaccessible learning experiences at low costs.

There was some resistance when computers were introduced into classrooms in the 1980s. Now, schools and teachers across the globe are using computers with internet access to enrich the experiences of their students with hands-on learning, developing their technical skills to better prepare them for life after school.

Under the Hood with Facebook Video Calling, Powered by Skype

Yesterday, Facebook and Skype launched Facebook video calling, powered by Skype, which allows users to call and see each other right from facebook.com. At Skype, we are super excited about this product, which we closely collaborated with Facebook on many of the parts of the solution in a true team effort. We think users will love its ease of use and simplicity. It combines the quality and scale of Skype video calling with the social experiences of Facebook in a way that we believe makes for a powerful combination.

Without a doubt, techies around the world will want to know how we did it. How did we integrate Skype and Facebook? Will it scale? Does it use the Skype client?

The first step of the user experience is on facebook.com. While looking at the profile page or while in a chat, users will now see buttons which allow them to initiate a video call with their friends. Those buttons are rendered as part of the Facebook Web page. When a user clicks on the "call" button, the page will check for the existence of the Skype video calling software, which is an optimized version of Skype's desktop software that powers the video calling experience; we call this the plug-in. If the Skype plug-in hasn't been used before, the user is prompted to install it. Facebook's servers interact with Skype's technology through a proprietary REST API that we have developed. Through that API, Facebook automatically creates an anonymous Skype account for new callers (or 'callees'). Our REST API also allows Facebook servers to obtain a login credential that can be used to log the user into Skype using the anonymous account.

The plug-in is in essence, a miniature version of the Skype client. We've optimized the Skype client for Facebook by removing most of the user interface and eliminating many of the features that are not needed for the Facebook application (e.g., Skype instant messaging). Our plug-in is actually composed of two distinct parts. One is the runtime, which is a standalone miniature Skype client, and the other is an actual browser plug-in. The runtime provides some simple APIs through an RPC mechanism, and the browser plug-in delivers those APIs in JavaScript for access within facebook.com. Despite its compact size and simplified UI, the runtime is Skype in all ways that matter. Our peer-to-peer technology, our firewall and NAT traversal protocols, our video and audio codecs, our media processing engine - everything that makes Skype wonderful - is there, in the runtime.

Once the plug-in has been downloaded and installed, and the caller logged into it anonymously (a process which happens automatically - invisibly to the user), a handshake takes place through Facebook's server infrastructure. This handshake alerts the 'callee' that the caller wishes to call them. By using Facebook infrastructure for this, we allow calls to be initiated prior to installation of a plug-in on the callee's computer. Together, we believe this brings real virality to this feature and reduces the barriers between people communicating.

The user interface you see for the video itself is rendered by the Skype runtime. It's the same video quality you'd expect from a normal Skype video call, since it is a normal Skype video call. It just happens to be invoked from within Facebook, and uses a slim UI.

One of Skype's challenges in providing this functionality was scale. Even though Skype leverages its P2P technology to help achieve scale, we still rely on server infrastructure for several parts of the solution. To handle all of this, Skype has substantially increased server counts and added bandwidth in all of our data centers. The actual voice and video traffic utilizes Skype's global P2P network, allowing for great quality without needing thousands of expensive servers. Together, we'll be rolling the new capability out over the next week or so and carefully monitoring load and quality as we go. As a result, some of you will see video calling buttons on Facebook, and others will not. If you see those buttons, please go ahead and click on it - you'll be able to call anyone on your Facebook friend list.

We think this is awesome technology. We've combined everything that makes Skype great - our quality, our P2P technology, our scale - with the world's number one social property on the Web, and brought those two things together in a completely seamless way.

We hope you enjoy it!

Skype CEO Tony Bates talks about making Skype video calling ubiquitous

In the following video, Tony Bates talks about Skype's leadership in video calling and recaps some important milestones over the past few weeks. He highlights today's news about Facebook video calling powered by Skype, and shares Skype's broader multi-platform strategy to bring video calling everywhere - the desktop, mobile phones, TVs and the Web.

Are you part of the Living Workplace transformation?

Over on our enterprise blog, Joanna Brace introduced our Living Workplace study, which looks at recent trends in business technology:

Why do I call it The Living Workplace? Because the notion of work is being re-invented. How we communicate and collaborate is at the crux of this change, and is driven by new technology. This Living Workplace is open and flexible. It supports remote working, where it doesn't matter if you're at your office, home, an airport or a coffee shop. It acknowledges that your personal and work lives co-exist, and it understands that being able to bring your personal technology choices into the workplace can help you and your business achieve the best possible results.

Are you part of the Living Workplace transformation? Find out more and download the report from our dedicated website.

An update on Skype for Mac

Over the last few days we’ve seen renewed interest in the design of Skype for Mac, and I’m going to give you some insight into our thinking and into our plans to address some of your concerns.

Some background: at Skype, we build products for users ranging from grandmothers in China to 15 year old students in Connecticut – and everyone else in between. We take a huge number of factors into consideration when designing software: from different usage patterns (video/voice/IM) to technical literacy; from age to cultural norms. All of these have an impact on everything from product and process design, user interface layout, iconography and more. And given this diversity of design decisions, some of them occasionally fail to please segments of our users. I’d like to reiterate our commitment to one segment in particular – those of you who’ve been vocal in your feedback on the most recent versions of Skype for Mac.

The shift in user experience from 2.8 to 5.X is a significant one, and we acknowledge that this was a lot to have delivered to existing users in a single update. Nevertheless, we believe that the 5.X platform offers significant advantages over the previous versions for the majority of our users, and this is borne out in the usage and opinion data we’re seeing from the Mac user base as a whole.

However, there’s still plenty of work for us to do and we know that not all of you prefer 5.X. To that end, we’ve taken a comprehensive look at the feedback from the last couple of months and identified two broad patterns. I’ve captured a distillation of some of the issues we have heard.

Some of you want to be able to multitask more within Skype

We’ve seen a number of comments from people who want to be able to make video calls and have IM conversations at the same time, or have multiple IM conversations visible at once – and many more permutations and combinations. If you’re in this group, you probably find the current 5.X interface less flexible than 2.8.

What are we doing about this? Two things. First, we’re making Skype 2.8 available for download from our website, and it’ll be available for the foreseeable future. Note that it doesn’t let you make (or participate in) group video calls, nor does it contain all of the performance improvements we’ve made in 5.X. But the last thing we want is to prevent you from using software you prefer.

Second, we’re planning to make some additional changes which will allow you to multitask more effectively within Skype, including a change to the UI which will allow you to continue an IM conversation with one person or group while participating in a video call with another, or when switching to another app.

It’s also worth pointing out the call monitor window, which has been in 5.X since the beginning, which shows you the status of the current call, allowing you to adjust volume, mute, and so on, no matter what you’re looking at. Additionally, the compact sidebar view should help you navigate quickly among a larger number of concurrent IM conversations.

Some of you want to be able to multitask more between Skype and other apps

This is how we interpret feedback about the overall ‘size’ of Skype. Many of you have commented about the size of the Skype window, and published screenshots of how you use Skype 2.8 in conjunction with other apps.

We introduced the contact monitor panel in 5.X, which gives you an easy way to see your contacts’ status while you’re doing other things. To display it, just press Command-3. You can choose whether you see all of your contacts, or just a certain group or groups.

On the other hand, we will be sticking with the metaphor of a primary, combined window which newer users and less frequent users find easier to learn. We plan to introduce overlay panels like the contact monitor to provide additional flexibility for those of you who need it.

The future of Skype on the Mac

Mac OS X continues to be a very important platform for us, and we’re very privileged to have such an active and vocal user community on the Mac platform. As Krishna said in his previous blog post, we’re moving to a much more rapid delivery cycle for our products, which should give us opportunities to iterate and improve on aspects of functionality and experience in a much shorter timeframe than we’ve been able to in the past. We’re committed to delivering regular improvements to the product – and those listed above are part of a direct response to your feedback. Please keep it coming.

Skype to add 350 new jobs in 2011

Skype is growing its team globally, and this is very exciting news as we continue to ramp our innovation of new products across many different platforms for consumers and businesses. Among the 350 jobs we’re adding, many of the roles will be in our Palo Alto office, where our focus is to add superstar engineers to our already super-talented team of engineers who are based all over the globe.

We have cool new digs that we just moved into, and a smart, passionate, fun team. We created this video to show you what we’re all about, and to show you why Skype is the place to work in Silicon Valley. So if you want to work on the next great Skype idea and have the opportunity to be at a company that is transforming communications and bringing people closer together all over the world, check out our job opportunities, and get in touch.

28 million people online on Skype

Almost exactly a week after we broke the 27 million barrier, we’ve done it again. At approximately 1800 GMT today, there were over 28 million people online on Skype at the same time – a new record.

Skype to Skype calling minutes in 2010 equivalent to almost 25% of international PSTN calling minutes

New estimates from TeleGeography show that growth in international call traffic has slumped while international traffic from Skype users continues to accelerate, and that the number of Skype to Skype minutes was equivalent to an estimated 24.7% of the international PSTN calling minutes during 2010*.

For more details, see the press release from TeleGeography.

* 24.7% is the ratio of Skype-to-Skype calling minutes to international PSTN calling minutes.

CIO update: Post-mortem on the Skype outage

As a follow-up to last week’s outage, here is a detailed explanation of what transpired, the root cause, and plans to mitigate this from happening again in the future. For starters, it helps to understand that Skype is based on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, which is explained here. Last week, the P2P network became unstable and suffered a critical failure. The failure lasted approximately 24 hours from December 22, 0800 PST/1600 GMT to December 23, 0800 PST/1600 GMT.

What was the cause for the failure?

On Wednesday, December 22, a cluster of support servers responsible for offline instant messaging became overloaded. As a result of this overload, some Skype clients received delayed responses from the overloaded servers. In a version of the Skype for Windows client (version 5.0.0152), the delayed responses from the overloaded servers were not properly processed, causing Windows clients running the affected version to crash.

Users running either the latest Skype for Windows (version 5.0.0.156), older versions of Skype for Windows (4.0 versions), Skype for Mac, Skype for iPhone, Skype on your TV, and Skype Connect or Skype Manager for enterprises were not affected by this initial problem.

However, around 50% of all Skype users globally were running the 5.0.0.152 version of Skype for Windows, and the crashes caused approximately 40% of those clients to fail. These clients included 25–30% of the publicly available supernodes, also failed as a result of this problem.

If approximately 20% of total Skype clients failed, why was there a much bigger disruption to Skype functionality?

Although Skype staff responded quickly to disable the overloaded servers and to eliminate client requests to them, a significant number of supernodes had already failed. A supernode is important to the P2P network because it takes on additional responsibilities compared to regular nodes, acting like a directory, supporting other Skype clients, helping to establish connections between them and creating local clusters typically of several hundred peer nodes per each supernode.

Once a supernode has failed, even when restarted, it takes some time to become available as a resource to the P2P network again. As a result, the P2P network was left with 25–30% fewer supernodes than normal. This caused a disproportionate load on the remaining available supernodes.

Why weren’t the other supernodes available to help?

The failure of 25–30% of supernodes in the P2P network resulted in an increased load on the remaining supernodes. While we expect this kind of increase in the instance of a failure, a significant proportion of users were also restarting crashed Windows clients at this time. This massively increased the load as they reconnected to the peer-to-peer cloud. The initial crashes happened just before our usual daily peak-hour (1000 PST/1800 GMT), and very shortly after the initial crash, which resulted in traffic to the supernodes that was about 100 times what would normally be expected at that time of day.

Supernodes have a built in mechanism to protect themselves and to avoid adverse impact on the systems hosting them when operational parameters do not fall into expected ranges. We believe that increased load in supernode traffic led to some of these parameters exceeding normal limits, and as a result, more supernodes started to shut down. This further increased the load on remaining supernodes and caused a positive feedback loop, which led to the near complete failures that occurred a few hours after the triggering event.

Regrettably, as a result of the confluence of events – server overload, a bug in Skype for Windows clients (version 5.0.0.152), and the decline in available supernodes – Skype’s functionality became unavailable to many of our users for approximately 24 hours.

How did Skype help support supernode recovery?

In order to restore Skype functionality, the Skype engineering and operations team introduced hundreds of instances of the Skype software into the P2P network to act as dedicated supernodes, which we nick-named “mega-supernodes,” to provide enough temporary supernode capacity to accelerate the recovery of the peer-to-peer cloud.

By late Wednesday night (PST) it was evident that only a proportion (about 15-20%) of Skype users connections were ‘healing’ and the volume of load on the supernodes continued to be unusually high. In response, our team introduced several thousand more mega-supernodes through the night. During Wednesday night, full recovery of the P2P network was underway and the majority of users were able to connect to the P2P network normally by early morning (California-PST) on December 23rd.

As we reported during the incident, in order to recover the core Skype functionality as quickly as possible, we utilized resources normally used to support Group Video Calling, to deploy supernodes, and over the course of Thursday night and Friday morning we returned these to their normal use and restored Group Video Calling functionality in time for Christmas.

The supernodes stabilized overnight on Thursday and by Friday, several tens of thousands of supernodes were supporting the P2P network. During Friday, we withdrew a significant proportion of the mega-supernodes from service, leaving some in operation to ensure stability of the P2P network over Christmas and New Year.

What is Skype doing to prevent this from happening again?

We understand how important the reliability, security and quality of our software is to Skype users around the world, and we work hard to maintain high standards, as well as develop new features and products.

First, we will continue to examine our software for potential issues, and provide ‘hotfixes’ where appropriate, for download or automatic delivery to our users. Since a bug was identified in Skype for Windows (version 5.0.0.152), we had provided a fix to v5.0 of our Windows software prior to the incident, and we will provide further updates for download this week. We will also be reviewing our processes for providing ‘automatic’ updates to our users so that we can help keep everyone on the latest Skype software. We believe these measures will reduce the possibility of this type of failure occurring again.

Second, we are learning the lessons we can from this incident and reviewing our processes and procedures, looking in particular for ways in which we can detect problems more quickly to potentially avoid such outages altogether, and ways to recover the system more rapidly after a failure.

Third, while our Windows v5 software release was subject to extensive internal testing and months of Beta testing with hundreds of thousands of users, we will be reviewing our testing processes to determine better ways of detecting and avoiding bugs which could affect the system.

Finally, as we continue to grow, we will keep under constant review the capacity of our core systems that support the Skype user base, and continue to invest in both capacity and resilience of these systems. An investment program we initiated a year ago has significantly increased our capacity already and more investment is planned for 2011 both to support the ongoing roll out of our paid and enterprise products, and to continue to support the growth of our core Skype software that we know millions of users rely on every day.

We are truly grateful to all of our users and humbled by your continued support. We know how much you rely on Skype, and we know that we fell short in both fulfilling your expectations and communicating with you during this incident. Lessons will be learned and we will use this as an opportunity to identify and introduce areas of improvement to our software, further assess and invest in capacity and stability, and develop better processes for outage recovery and communications to our user base. Thank you to everyone.

CEO update: group video calling is back

I would like to take a moment to thank each of you for your patience, understanding, and support during Skype’s outage. We know how important your Skype conversations are to you and we take any disruption to our service very seriously.

Skype continues to be stable and all of our core services – audio, video and IM – are back to normal. Just in time for the holidays, we’ve been able to re-instate group video calling, which is already available for many of you, and should be fully operational for everyone within the coming hours.

We are excited about this latest development, since it’s important to us that you have the chance to share your holiday moments in a group video call with your family, friends, and loved ones.

Our engineering team and operations teams have worked very hard to bring back our services, and they are very dedicated, working through their holidays, to monitor and ensure Skype is available to you. Some of the outstanding areas our engineers are continuing to work on include bringing back offline IM and adding further robustness to the Skype infrastructure.

I mentioned that a post-mortem with a root cause analysis about Skype’s outage would be provided soon. We will have that ready to share with you early next week from one of Skype’s engineering team members.

I want to thank you again for allowing us at Skype to be a part of your life. Happy Holidays.

Another update: Skype stabilized

I wanted to continue to update you on the status of the outage. We've been able to successfully stabilize Skype due to the dedicated supernodes deployed by Skype's engineering team. We're at roughly 90 percent of normal user volumes.

Audio, video and IM are running normally. But, a couple of our offerings, including offline IM and Group Video Calling, are not available yet, and we are working hard to restore them in due course.

We now understand the cause of the problem and we believe it was not caused by a malicious attack. But, we are still doing a full analysis and we will provide an in-depth post-mortem.

Nothing can make up for the missed experiences, but we're going to be sending our Pay As You Go and Pre-Pay users a Skype Credit voucher via email. The voucher can be used to give you approximately 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world.*

For our active subscribers, we will credit you with a week's extra subscription service. It may take a few days, but once implemented, it will be applied from your next renewal date.

Again, we sincerely apologize to all of you for this service outage and the inconvenience it has caused. We know how important it is for Skype to be available, so you can connect to your friends, family and colleagues.

Your can continue to stay tuned for more updates either on this blog or by following @skype.

* The exact number of minutes of calls you’ll be able to make will depend on our rates for the country you want to call.

A further update on Skype downtime

I’m sure by now many of you have heard about the downtime which has affected Skype around the world. Our priority has been to stabilise the problem, and then to begin to restore access to Skype functionality.

It’s taken some time to do, but we’re making steady progress. To put things in perspective, there are now around 16.5 million people online on Skype around the world. This is about 80% of what we’d normally expect to see at this time of day.

We’ve stabilised Skype’s core functionality – IM, audio and video – but it will take longer for us to restore offline IM and group video calling. It’s been a tough 24 hours for many of you – and I’d like to thank you for your patience as we bring Skype back to normal.

I realise that it’s difficult to compensate you for not being able to talk to or see your friends, family or colleagues, but we’re planning to offer Skype Credit vouchers to all of our loyal paying customers to thank you for your continued support.

Stay tuned for more updates, either on this blog or by following @skype on Twitter.

Significant increase in the number of people online

In the last hour, we’ve seen evidence of a significant increase in the number of people online. Because of the way the Skype software works, it’s not possible for anyone to obtain an exact figure, but we now estimate it to be over 10 million.

Please note that some features may not work as reliably as expected – peoples’ online status may be slow to update, and instant messages might not be delivered as quickly as they are normally. Group video calling will take longer to return to normal.

Status update on downtime

See our latest update on the downtime.

An update on the downtime which has been affecting many of you around the world: the ability of one Skype user to find another relies on what we call ‘supernodes’, and yesterday, a number of these failed due to a software issue, which we’ve now identified. Our engineers are working to resolve the problem.

Millions of you are already reporting that you can now sign in to Skype normally, and we estimate that there are already almost 5 million people online. As a guide, this is around 30% of what we’d expect at this time of day – and that number is increasing all the time. Unfortunately, it’s not possible for us to predict on an individual level when you’ll be able to sign in again, and we thank you for your patience in the meantime.

It’s worth noting that our enterprise product, Skype Connect, is working normally, though Skype Manager and our other web-based functions will continue to stay offline for a little longer. Additionally, features like group video calling will take longer to return to normal.

We’re sincerely sorry for this disruption - like you, all of us at Skype rely on Skype every day. We understand just how important Skype is to your friendships, family, and work, and so are particularly aware of the impact of rare problems like this. We’re working hard to restore full functionality to the Skype software, and hope to have more information to share soon. You can also follow @skype on Twitter for further updates.

Skype downtime today

See our latest update on the downtime.

Earlier today, we noticed that the number of people online on Skype was falling, which wasn’t typical or expected, so we began to investigate.

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.

Stay tuned to @skype on Twitter for the latest updates on the situation – and many thanks for your continued patience in the meantime.

Today's the day Skype says #hellopaloalto

Today our two West Coast US offices combine forces and move to our new space in Palo Alto. We’ve spent the last few months refurbishing the site, and today’s the day we get to settle in.

For the first time, it brings together our marketing, PR, legal and business development teams, formerly based on the eBay campus in San Jose, with our cloud computing and other engineering and architecture teams, who have until now been working from a temporary space in Brisbane (the one in northern California, not Queensland).

Our new office is in the heart of Silicon Valley, and it’s somewhere we’re very proud to call our American home. It’s also a good opportunity to remind you that we’re hiring in a big way – as I write, we have 51 vacancies in the US, with many more on their way in 2011.

Stay tuned for more tales from the new office

Celebrating 25 million concurrent users

Yesterday we reached a new milestone for peak concurrent users: 25 million people online, on Skype, at the same time. Our software is designed to handle large numbers of concurrent users, with wideband audio and group video calls all flowing smoothly around the world – from mothers in Montevideo to their sons in San Francisco, and from contractors in Canberra to their suppliers in Seoul.

In 2009, our users spoke, stared and sung for 113 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes – and for the first six months of this year, approximately 40% of Skype-to-Skype minutes were video minutes. All of this made possible by software built by a team of just under 800 people*. How do we do this?

Very simply: we do one thing. Our single minded focus is on building the best communications products, and building them for the whole world. This is not a hobby – it’s who and what we are. And at Skype, we have one ambition: to build communications products which billions of people embrace every day.

Skype software takes care of the complexities of network topography, firewalls, different OSes, multiple devices – computers, and a myriad of connection types, leaving you to do the talking, laughing, smiling, crying, singing, dancing and more. Because we think 25 million is worth celebrating.

* as of June 30, 2010

Moore's Law and Skype Video Calling

Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware.

The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in a 1965 paper, whereby the "law" unfolds as a self-fulfilling prophecy – a predictable path for fully realized capability of computing hardware that leads to faster speeds, lower cost, smaller components and better performance over time.

Buy a $599 device and it can be subject to obsoletism at the hands of mass-market options that sell for half, then a quarter, and eventually a tenth of the price. And, when unbeatable lower cost, high performance options are readily available, spending at the top-end can be like throwing money away, especially if you are buying a video calling system and there is no one else to call.

So with Skype video calling, you don't have to worry about that.

• It's free or low cost to call your friends
• It's great quality with up to HD 720p video and SILK super wideband audio
• It's accessible by millions of people around the world
• It's available across many different platforms like desktop computers, mobiles, TVs and more.

So with no significant privilege to participate – you too can enjoy Skype and know, more than likely, that there will be someone on the other end who you can call.

Can we still call it a TV?

As said in the Panasonic commercial, “Can we still call it a TV?” The answer is no.

The old broadcast TV has literally transformed into an interactive communication device, allowing you to make widescreen video calls from the comfort of your living room.

Panasonic and Samsung TVs with Skype have been shipping since early Spring this year, and I can’t be more pleased.

The feedback so far is very positive. We believe using Skype on a TV changes the video calling experience dramatically – it’s fun, accessible and more lifelike. Two-way video calls from a TV are not only free, but it also doesn’t matter if you are calling someone else who is using Skype on a PC, TV or mobile phone.

In 2009, we surveyed a sample of 2,450 Skype users, and 48% of them said they would be more likely to conduct video calls using a TV. So, we’re glad we’ve been able to address this, and would like to invite more of you to be able to experience it for yourself.

We’ve updated our web page to highlight all of the available Skype on your TV options and some new TV webcams too.

And, that’s not all. Thanks to the availability of SkypeKit, our SDK for developers and partners, the innovation on TVs doesn’t stop here. We continue talking to a variety of TV and set-top box manufacturers who also share our goal of bringing video calls to large screens. So stay tuned, we hope to have more exciting news on this front coming soon.

The power of the SILK codec

At Skype, we are passionate about quality. Our engineers do everything they can to make Skype work well across a range of different computers, service providers, Internet speeds, and computer equipment.

One of the key ingredients in quality is the fidelity of the speech that you hear when the other person is talking. Our aim is to make the experience as close to “the person sounds like they are in the room with me” as possible.

The High-Def Factor

In order to make it sound like the other person is in the room with you, it is necessary to capture the full frequency range of their speech, transmit it over the network, and reconstruct it at the other end. This is something that the traditional telephone networks – including mobile and landline – are not very good at. Those networks were designed to convey “just enough” of the frequency range of human speech to make the call intelligible, but not nearly enough to make it sound like they are in the same room as you.

For Skype, it has always been important to go beyond the boundaries of the telephone network, and do more.

That’s why Skype invested in creating its own speech codec. A speech codec is a piece of technology which takes human voice and converts it to a format suitable for sending over the Internet, and then on the other side, converts it back to speech.

Our codec, called SILK, was designed to capture the true richness of human speech, and to work really well on the Internet, where Internet speeds vary. Think of the telephone network as being like a standard-definition television, and SILK being like a high-definition television. The difference is striking. Once you’ve tried it, it’s hard to go back – just like HDTV. In fact, we thought that SILK was so awesome, we contributed it to the community. We’ve made our code open source, and have brought SILK forward for standardization by international standards bodies.

Hear the Difference

The two links below represent two samples of speech – one that uses a “standard-def” codec (called G.729), and another coded using our SILK codec in its highest quality setting. Listen for yourself. What do you think?

• G.729 sample (680 KB, WAV format)
• SILK sample (680 KB, WAV format)

Proving the Difference

But, maybe it was just us. As experts, perhaps we could tell the difference, but our users could not. To convince ourselves of the difference, we ran a test. We selected a random subset of our users. These users were not aware of the test, ensuring it was blind. For those users, we modified the behavior of the client so that it used a specific codec. For some users, it was one of the codecs used in the telephone network – not a high-definition one. For other users, we used SILK. In fact, we tested SILK in its four different modes – from SILK NarrowBand (SILK-NB) (which uses less bandwidth and captures less fidelity), to SILK MediumBand (SILK-MB), to SILK WideBand (SILK-WB), up to its highest quality mode – SILK Super WideBand (SILK-SWB), which uses more bandwidth and provides the best fidelity. To factor out problems with network connections, the tests were only run under good network speeds. At the end of the call, we asked them to rate the call from 1 (very bad) to 5 (excellent). We also measured how long the calls were.

Differences in user rating and average call duration with different codecs.

The results were surprising. Not only was there a difference – there was a big difference. For the highest quality SILK calls (SILK-SWB), the Mean Opinion Score (the value of the average user rating) was 3.8 on a scale from 1 to 5. The low quality codec G.729 was rated 0.4 lower, at 3.4.

Even more startling were the durations of the calls. Call durations for the highest quality SILK calls (SILK-SWB) were around 31 minutes on average. For the low quality G.729 codec they were 21 minutes, or 30% shorter! The higher quality of the SILK-SWB experience made the calls easier – more natural – and that meant users felt more comfortable talking longer.

For us, this test solidified what our engineers already knew – that a high fidelity experience really does make a difference.

It's all about quality

While Skype wasn’t the first company to allow Internet calling, Skype was one of the first companies to make Internet calling work for the masses. Whether doing a Skype-to-Skype call for free or calling any phone for very little, people have spent over 520 million minutes on average every day talking to people with Skype. Since the beginning, our primary objective has been to deliver the best quality experience at a low price.

Our dedication to quality has allowed our community to grow fast – our average monthly connected users grew from 91 to 124 million in the last year alone (June 2009 - June 2010). We will continue to build products and features with the level of quality that keeps our community connecting with one another.

Customer feedback

In fact, one seemingly simple feature that the Skype team hears loudest is our end of call customer feedback, where everyone has the opportunity to rate their experience after they make a Skype call (depending on which version you are on). This direct customer feedback allows Skype to improve our services in near real-time and more importantly allows our community to tell us what is working and what needs improvement.

So what exactly are we doing with the feedback you are giving us and why is it important? Every score we receive is used to rate customer experience for our different desktop products. For people making paid calls to regular phones, we use the feedback to rate our carrier partners.

Working with partners

In order to deliver Internet calls to landline or mobile phone numbers, we rely on our telecom partners to connect calls to telecom networks globally. It is common practice in the Internet communications space to rely on a few telecom partners and aggregators to deliver calls globally as this tends to be the most cost effective way to offer cheap calling.

We at Skype have taken a different approach. In addition to using aggregators, we aim to work with local partners who actually own the networks available in their home markets. This, is in our opinion, is the only way to deliver good quality of service. Most importantly, this approach gives us the choice to select the best performing partners for each network.

In practice, this means that at any given time we have more than one partner delivering calls into a given country or network. The number of calls each partner receives is defined by you – our customer. The higher the feedback score per partner, the higher the volumes that partner receives.

Experience in Argentina

One good example is Argentina. Average feedback scores for calling Argentina were lower than overall scores in South America. This prompted us to start looking for local options. After establishing cooperation with a major local network operator, we saw feedback scores rise sharply - from 3.5 to 4 out of 5 maximum. At the same time, call volumes increased over the next three to four months.

We appreciate your help in improving our products. By taking two seconds to give us feedback after a call with Skype, you can help to directly influence the service quality.

Some companies may decide to cut corners to get a feature into the market earlier or save some money at the expense of their customers, but at Skype, we remain committed to providing the best quality products and services to our community, period

EU Vice-President Neelie Kroes joins the Skype crew in Tallinn

Neelie Kroes (second from right) at the Skype office in Tallinn

Skype is proud to be one of the few global Internet innovations that comes from Europe. So today it was a pleasure and honour to welcome in Skype’s Tallinn office (our ‘birthplace’, so to speak) Neelie Kroes, the Vice President of the European Commission in charge of the EU’s “Digital Agenda”.

Mrs Kroes visited our research labs and experienced first-hand some of the cool innovations that Skypers have been working on hard in the labs recently including group video calling.

Now Mrs Kroes knows that ‘old Europe’ can still come up with innovations like Skype that revolutionise the world. In a speech earlier this month entitled “Europe 3.0”, she had already challenged students at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, asking: “will you join me in building this new mindset? Will you found the next Skype?” Going forwards, we will work with her to contribute to her initiative for ‘Digital Europe’, so that thanks to forward-looking government policies and protections such as net neutrality, Skype can continue to flourish, build new mindsets and change the world for the better, and so that many more innovators and online entrepreneurs emerge and succeed in Europe.

Fring’s mis-use of Skype software was damaging to our brand and reputation

An hour or so ago, Fring reported on their blog that we had blocked their access to Skype. I want to make one thing absolutely clear: this is untrue.

Fring was using Skype software in a way it wasn’t designed to be used – and in a way which is in breach of Skype’s API Terms of Use and End User License Agreement. We’ve been talking with Fring for some time to try to resolve this amicably.

However, over time, Fring’s mis-use of our software was increasingly damaging our brand and reputation with our customers. On Friday, for example, Fring withdrew support for video calls over Skype on iOS 4 without warning, again damaging our brand and disappointing our customers, who have high expectations of the Skype experience.

We actively encourage developers to build products that work with Skype, acting, of course in accordance with our various API licences. At the same time, Skype will rigorously protect our brand and reputation, and those developers that do not comply with our terms will be subject to legal enforcement.

In this case, however, there is no truth to Fring’s claims that Skype has blocked it. Fring made the decision to remove Skype functionality on its own.

Skype: Opening Up the Dialogue Between Politicians and Their Constituents

If you're reading this blog, you already know something about Skype. You know that Skype is in the business of enabling people's conversations. We're all about increasing the ways people communicate. However, one of the places where there is not enough communication is Washington, D.C.

Republicans huddle with Republicans. Democrats huddle with their bird-feathers. Industry segments talk mostly to each other. It's fed by a lot of money funneled through a large network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and company lobbyists. An echo chamber has taken hold and, too often, the public is left scratching their heads, wondering "D.C... can you hear me now?"

That's why Skype was quite pleased this past spring when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) and Minority Leader John Boehner (@gopleader) began discussions with us about making Skype software available for official use by Members of Congress and their staffs. The use of Skype and other broadband-enabled applications represent an interesting opportunity to help open up new channels of communications between government officials and the people they represent - for free. Simply put, our users do better when there is more transparency and accountability in government.

For some Members, Skype video calling represents a new way of communicating with constituents as well as with other Members. It is Skype's goal to ensure that all Members of Congress - Republicans, Democrats and Independents, including the only member of the Socialist party, Bernie Sanders - are comfortable using Skype to have direct conversations with their constituents. Video calling in the past has had a network effects problem - where one person may have it, but many others don't. Skype has helped bring video calling to a lot of people. Today, with half a billion Skype registered users and more than 23 million users on Skype at peak times, Skype video is a widely adopted technology that is helping people around the world stay connected. While it's interesting that the use of Skype on Capitol Hill is being debated in D.C., Skype is far from being a partisan communications tool. Skype is designed for everyone.

To this end, we want to help all members of Congress realize the benefits of using Skype. We began working with the bi-partisan House Committee on Administration to ensure that the use of Skype does not compromise the safety and security of the broadband communications networks used for official government business. This cooperative effort between Skype and the Committee on Administration is ongoing. In the meantime, Members are able to use Skype on any available mobile Internet (3G/4G) or WiFi network to improve outreach and communication with their constituents.

Skype will continue to work with both parties and with the House Committee on Administration with the objective of ensuring that Skype software is available to all and that it meets the necessarily unique security concerns of Congress.

2009 in Mobile

Russ Shaw is General Manager of our mobile business.

As the year draws to a close, I thought I'd do two things - first, introduce myself to readers of our blog, and second, talk a little bit about our mobile strategy. Peter tells me there are quite a few of you (hundreds of thousands, in fact) and I realise it's been a while since we've talked on this blog about what we're up to in the mobile world. So, hence this post.

Scott Durchslag blogged at length back in March about where we were at, and so I want to pick up some of the threads he began then. Our mobile strategy has three strands: first, what we call 'direct to consumer' apps (i.e., ones you can download yourself from the Skype website or a partner), such as Skype for iPhone. Second, working with mobile operators like 3 to deliver great experiences and free Skype-to-Skype calls on a wide range of phones. Third, working with hardware manufacturers like Nokia to develop truly integrated products, where Skype is built in to devices' operating systems. Let's take each of those strands in order:

Skype for iPhone

We're very happy with our iPhone app. But, like any of our products, that doesn't mean we're done. We've got a number of updates on the roadmap for 2010 - and yes, I hear you on push notifications. They'll arrive just as soon as we've perfected the experience.

Many of you have also been asking when we'll release a version which allows you to make calls over 3G - the holy grail of Skype on the mobile, if you like. We've had a 3G-capable version ready for some time now, but Apple's current restrictions mean that they won't allow us to make it available on the App Store for the moment.

Skype for Symbian

On the 3G calling front, we do have an alternative for the time being. We quietly slipped out a beta version of Skype for Symbian earlier this month, and early indications suggest that people are very happy with it. You can make free Skype-to-Skype calls, and calls to landlines and mobiles, on either WiFi or 3G data connections.

Once we've completed our testing on a wider range of phones, including touchscreen handsets, we'll release the gold version. Symbian is the world's most popular mobile platform, and we're all very proud to be able to offer a full Skype experience on Symbian phones for the first time in its history.

Skype on 3

Our partnership with 3 continues to go from strength to strength. The 3 Skypephone and INQ handsets allow you to make free Skype-to-Skype calls, and calls to landlines and mobiles outside of your own country at our low rates. The partnership demonstrates that Skype can work in harmony with mobile operators, and isn't the scary threat that some of them seem to think it is.

Skype for Nokia N900

Last month, we launched Skype on the Nokia N900. It's the first example of our deep integration work with Nokia - Skype is fully built in to the phone's operating system with no additional downloads required. Mark Douglas from the mobile team recorded a quick video demo which explains all.

Keeping in touch, everywhere

At Skype we recognise that not everyone has access to a Skype-enabled smartphone all of the time. Even if you do, it might not be convenient to use one, and we've developed two products which aim to make Skype accessible while you're away from your desktop computer.

Many of you will have received emails in the last few days with details of your Skype To Go number. And of course, many of you will be in on the secret already. If you haven't tried it yet, you should. Skype To Go numbers are a great way to take advantage of Skype's low rates, no matter which phone you're calling from. If you're in a supported country, you can make a local call, and get in touch with friends and family even if they're countries or continents away - without breaking the bank. Think of it as a super-simple, pared down version of Skype.

At the other end of the scale, if you're on the move and have a laptop with you, you should check out Skype Access. It lets you pay by the minute for WiFi using your Skype Credit at hundreds of thousands of hotspots worldwide. It's included in Skype 4.2 Beta for Windows and Skype 2.8 for Mac - read Peter's earlier blog post to find out more.

And more

I'd like to reassure all of you who've been waiting patiently for our apps for the Nokia N97 and BlackBerry smartphones. They're on their way, but unfortunately we've faced delays beyond our control in getting them to you. The BlackBerry app is in private beta testing at the moment, and we're working hard to create the best possible Skype experience on both of these devices. When they're ready, you'll be among the first to know.

What's coming up next?

In 2010, you can expect to see three things from us - first, more and better direct download apps. We're focusing on getting the Skype experience right. What does that mean? Free Skype-to-Skype calls on both WiFi and mobile data connections, and a richer experience - great IM capabilities as well as calling, for example. And we've got a few more tricks up our sleeve.

Second, we're continuing to work with mobile operators around the world. All I can say on this point is - watch this space.

And third, working hard to deliver those integrated Skype experiences with hardware manufacturers. Making Skype so much a part of the mobile phone that you don't even have to think about using it - it's just there.

Where to find us

We're going to launch a mobile-specific blog in the first quarter of 2010, so you can expect to hear a lot more from us in the mobile team in the months to come. We're already on Twitter, however, and you can find us at @skypemobile - follow us and stay up-to-date with all of our mobile news.

With that, I wish you a very happy holiday season. Stay tuned for 2010!

The next stage in Skype's brand journey

I’m Neil, Skype’s General Manager for our global consumer business. What does that mean in simple terms? That I’m responsible for managing our desktop product lineup – Skype for Windows, Mac and Linux – as well as looking after our website, our online marketing and the Skype brand as a whole.

I don’t do this all single-handedly, thankfully, and I have a great team here at Skype who contribute to the incredible products we make. Nevertheless, there are some areas where an outside perspective can be invaluable, and that’s why we’ve just appointed three great agencies to help us develop the Skype brand and help us with our global advertising. The Skype brand isn’t just about our logo, or clouds and rainbows. It’s about what you, the Skype user, think about us as a company and the products we make. How you feel about your experience of using the Skype software, and how you describe Skype to your friends.

Wolff Olins, TBWA\ and Rapp will be our partners on our journey to enhance this iconic global brand and all that it means to you, and I’m looking forward to working with them in the months to come.

Interview with Skype CEO Josh Silverman

This week will mark the first month on the job for Skype CEO Josh Silverman. It may not be as round an anniversary as 100 days, but if you want to find out what's brewing in the mind of the man at the top, Almost Thirty Days On the Job looks like a pretty workable milestone. And it didn't even require an international logistics operation to do this interview -- being able to reel in the CEO to benefit the readers of this blog is one of the perks of an open-plan office here in Tallinn. Enjoy.

Villu Arak: What are your initial observations from the Skype office and Tallinn, your home for the next two months? Has anything surprised you, or is it business as usual among the 300 people that work for Skype in Estonia?

Josh Silverman: My first reaction in Tallinn was, "Holy cow, there's two feet of snow at the end of March!" But I was certainly not fazed by this -- it looked picture-perfect and seemed to bring out more smiles on the streets. Besides, I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I spent my first 17 years shoveling enough snow to fill the Grand Canyon. So bring it on!

What's quite clear is that I'm surrounded by incredibly bright people who have a ton of great ideas about where we can take this business. Where I can perhaps add value is to help us focus us on the "Vital Few" - the (very) few things we're going to commit to delivering with excellence; as opposed to the "Worthless Many" - the long list of very good ideas which, if we tried to tackle them all, would bring us to our knees. The hard part about prioritization isn't saying "no" to bad ideas, that's easy. It's saying "no" to the good ones in order to deliver on the truly essential and/or breakthrough projects that really drives focus through an organization.

VA: When your arrival at Skype was announced, you wrote that you want to build the greatest products -- and the greatest company -- on Earth. And you pledged to always have the best interests of the Skype community at heart. What do you think are their core interests that you're treating as sacred territory not to be meddled with?

JS: Besides keeping communication within the Skype cloud free, there are two things we need to deliver very well: incredible ease of use and world-class sound and video. Everything else wins us bonus points. Skype is one of the most innovative companies in the world, and I want to make sure that the focus of that innovation is around making our products 1) even easier to use; 2) even more reliable and high quality; and 3) relevant to everyone everywhere for all their communications. Sure, with 309 million users under the belt today, we need to be thoughtful and weigh our choices carefully. But we're still a young company with plenty of ambition. And we'll continue to launch innovative new disruptive products, because that is who we are.

VA: Recently, a procurement agent for a high school in Portugal contacted us through the Skype website, seeking to buy a refrigerator for their laboratory. I didn't know we've expanded into that business, but beyond what you've outlined above, what are Skype's priorities in 2008 and beyond?

JS: Well, since Estonia got a whole winter's worth of snow a few weeks ago, we thought we'd make a quick buck selling it to less fortunate countries. The fridge is just a preservative, it's the snow inside that counts. But seriously, this year we'll make video -- including multiparty video -- more prominent and, er, easier to use. But more generally, I talk about end-to-end ease of use. It goes far beyond making the green call button easier to find. We're looking at every aspect, every stage of the user journey. From when you download the client and make your first call, all the way through the range of products we have, from the desktop to mobile. We're going to focus on where the biggest pain-points are along that journey, in order to make the whole experience seamless and delightfully easy. If we do it right, we'll be relevant to more people more often.

VA: Where does today's announcement of the new calling subscriptions fit in the ease-of-use department?

JS: That's right, we've just announced unlimited long-distance calling to over a third of the world's population. For those who haven't heard about it yet, you can basically make worry-free calls any time of the day and not be tied down by a long term contract - or high cost. You only pay a flat-rate monthly fee and you can make calls to landlines in the country of your choice to up to 34 destination countries worldwide. While these subscriptions are a great value, the main thrust was actually to make it even easier for people - not worrying about keeping the clock ticking while talking with your girlfriend in Prague, or running out of credit and having to recharge the account.

VA: As CEO of Evite eight years ago, you told Fast Company that you questioned the value of focusing on today, as it makes you lose sight of what's important. Do you still think that addressing today's issues is reactive management? Surely you've noticed some warts here and there -- what are the existing things that you'd like to fix?

JS: I think my views have evolved and aren't as black and white any more. One of the key skills of the CEO is to zoom in and zoom out. At 10am, you should be able to have a conversation on where things are going 5-10 years from now, followed by a switch at 11am to a discussion about what's shipping next week. We're playing an important role in helping shape one of the key global industries. So having an eye on the next 5-10 years is really important. At the same time there are some pressing issues we have to address today. Ok, so we've made it possible for more than 100 billion minutes in Skype-to-Skype conversations to happen, and it's a major milestone. We've helped make video calls mainstream, with about a quarter of Skype-to-Skype calls using video. But it's not just about milestones. At the top of my "now" agenda is this: radical ease of use. Skype still confuses some people, so we're digging even deeper to achieve step function change. But let me get through the first hundred days and let's take stock of our progress in the summer.

VA: There are a lot of developers out there that are developing third-party applications that expand Skype's functionality. What can this developer community expect from you?

JS: Philosophically speaking, I do think we need to continue building a robust ecosystem and supporting the developer community as best we can. I'm taking a little time to understand where we are and what the next steps should be. Soon, I'll share more thoughts on this on the Skype Developer Zone blog.

VA: And last but not least -- a recent story in the Financial Times implied that eBay could sell Skype this year. What's your take on this?

JS: Skype is a strong, profitable business with 61% year-on-year revenue growth and 309 million registered users, with 33 million added in Q1 2008. eBay has just made a huge investment in Skype by removing the earn-out. We have new management in place, and with the earnout out of the way, we measure ourselves by our ability to delight our users. That's our focus. That's our test.