Skype sets 27m online users record

Skype's official statistics have confirmed that it set a new record for simultaneous users of its VoIP service, with over 27 million online in the past seven days. In fact, both the 26m and 27m records were broken in short succession in the past few days; Skype is yet to comment officially on the numbers – they're perhaps waiting for the 30m mark, which would be rounder and more press release friendly – but the breakthrough comes in the wake of video-capable iOS apps and new group calling functionality.

Whether those two factors have seen more users flock to the service remains to be seen, but it certainly looks as though Skype's downtime over the holiday period has been forgotten or at least forgiven. A bug in a version of Skype for Windows was blamed for causing a chain reaction of supernode crashes, that pulled the VoIP service offline for an extended period.

[via Disruptive Telephony]