New record for Skype as 34M people use it concurrently

Have you ever taken a moment in the middle of Skype conversation to think how many people might be using the service at exactly the same time as you? If you’d done so yesterday, the answer would have been 34-million.

That number of concurrent users is a new record for the Microsoft-owned communications service.

Even Skype doesn’t seem particularly clear about what caused the sudden user spike, less than a week after it announced a then-record 32-million people using it concurrently.

In a post on the company’s official blog, Jennifer Caukin shared a few ideas:

“It’s a quick jump and speaks to the volume of people who rely on Skype everyday around the world to stay in touch. Perhaps it’s driven by all the buzz of people talking about the Oscars, NASCAR Daytona 500,” she said.

Caukin also speculated that it might have something to do with Skype’s announcement Mobile World Congress in Barcelona “for our new Skype for Windows Phone Beta app.”

Skype claims that the new app makes full use of the Windows Phone Metro interface, to deliver a “clean and simple Skype experience”.

It is difficult to gauge how many active Skype accounts there are out there, although the integration of its voice and video-calling service into social networking giant Facebook can’t have hurt its numbers.