Impacts of Skype growth

Jean Mercier has an interesting story about the Skype users logged in to the service at any one time. According to Jean's post, that number hit the 6 million mark on the 27th of March. That made me look at the bottom right-hand corner of the Skype app that I have running (a new version for Windows was First time I've noticed that. Jean goes on to talk about where most Skype users are - Western Europe and North and South America, he says - and the peak time in a given day when the most Skype users are logged in. That appears to be around 4pm GMT (6pm CET and 9am Shel's time in California) and later. Why is that interesting to me? Well, that's about the time FIR, our bi-weekly podcast, over Skype. Could that peak load of users be causing a strain on the internet/P2P network somewhere that impacts the quality of our Skype call as Shel hears it (he does the actual recording at his end) and as listeners to our podcast may then notice in the MP3 file? We've experienced intermittent poor call quality in recent shows. I'm asking the question, by the way, not providing the answer : ) Anyway, Skype has been an essential part of our podcast since we started it in January last year. But in VoIP app for the first time - SkypeIn numbers, voicemail, an interview with Skype CEO Niklas Zennestrom, is interesting to learn of some of the rather ordinary' organizational issues that a CEO has to address in any company and especially one that is experiencing rapid growth. The second could be quite contentious as it speaks of Google censorship in China issue a few months ago? No easy answers but DiggThis | NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at NevilleHobson.com