Skype appears to be experiencing technical difficulties affecting millions worldwide. Nothing official has been announced from Skype.
*UPDATE:
Skype's main website appears to be working. Even advertising their products but nothing on the outage. The support website on the other hand is down.
*UPDATE 2:
BBC News reported on the issue:
"We take outages like this really seriously and apologise for the inconvenience users are having," Tony Bates, Skype chief executive officer told BBC News.
The rest of the article:
Skype apologises for losing half of daily call traffic*UPDATE 3:
I finally got through the support page... Hot topic: Why can't I sign in to Skype?
Official statement:
Please note: We are aware that some people are currently encountering difficulties signing in to Skype. Rest assured, we are working hard to fix this. In the meantime, we apologise for any inconvenience this may be causing you.
An apology isn't much for millions lost by businesses today.
*UPDATE 4:
Finally an official announcement by Skype. I'm posting the full text. Who knows if they go down again...
Skype downtime today
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.
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Read it here <===
A mere "downtime"...
