Skype appears to be down, or at the very least it is for a whole lot of users throughout Europe who are tweeting in a ton of different languages about their inability to connect. Many blame Microsoft, and even founder Bill Gates for the downtime, which is sort of strange because the multi-billion dollar acquisition of Skype hasn’t even closed yet.
Anyway, let’s pray that this isn’t a repeat of the Great Skype Outage of December 2010, when the apocalypse appeared nigher than ever.
Funnily enough, a bug in the Microsoft Windows client was to blame for that one.
If you’re affected by the downtime, you’d be well advised to monitor Skype Heartbeat (although it claims things are all working normal at the time of publication) and @Skype.
I’ll be one of those watching closely, because it’s down for me too. Damn you, Microsoft!
Update: around 7 AM Eastern time, the Skype team tweeted that “a small number” of users may be having trouble connecting indeed, and that it’s investigating the cause.
Companies always say only a small subset of users experience problems when they occur.
I have no clue why they insist on pointing that out like it makes a difference.
Update 2: and a Heartbeat blog post for good measure, saying the same.
Update 3: Skype slowly crawling back up for me (7:40 AM Eastern time)
Update 4: Skype now says a configuration problem caused the glitch (8:15 AM Eastern time). The company adds that now that is has identified the cause of the problem, they have begun to address it. The client should reconnect automatically as soon as it’s able to do so.
Update 5: Skype now says the situation is improving. Well good.
Update 6: Skype says: “Today’s problems have stabilised, and recovery is ongoing. Skype should return to normal soon.” (12:20 PM Eastern Time)