Skype Usages Reaches Record 2 Billion Minutes Per Day

Traditional phone companies are faced with the reality that it's cheaper to make calls over the Internet, and also relatively easy, even for novices. It shouldn't be all that shocking, then, to learn that Skype users are spending 2 billion collective minutes daily using Microsoft's VoIP software. To put that into perspective, 2 billion minutes is enough time to travel to the moon and back...over 225 thousand times!

Alternately you could walk around the Earth more than 845 times or travel to Mars more than 5,400 times, Skype notes in a blog post announcing the record setting minutes usage.

Skype

"2 billion minutes is more than 33 million hours of people singing, laughing, joking and staying in touch. That means 1,388,000 days of togetherness which make up more than 3,805 years of sharing or nearly 38 centuries of time spent on Skype in one day," Skype says.

Part of the reason why Skype is seeing so much usage is because the software is almost everywhere, from PCs to mobile devices, to smart TVs and more. It's also free to use when calling up other Skype users, or you can pay $2.99/month (in the U.S. and Canada) to make unlimited landline calls and have your own Skype number.

Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011. More recently, Microsoft announced an end to to its Windows Live Messenger service, giving users an opportunity to integrate their contacts into Skype.