Skype outage affecting users around the globe
Skype says engineers are currently working on a fix and that the Internet phone service should be back to normal in "a few hours."
Skype appears to be suffering an outage.
Twitter users around the globe are taking to the social network to report that Skype is down for them. The tweets started hitting Twitter this morning and continue as of this writing. Users are also reporting that their mobile applications, including those on Android and on the iPhone, are inoperable.
I tested the Skype app on my Mac and it is down as of this writing. My Skype iPhone app is also down. CNET's Rafe Needleman had been experiencing outage issues this morning, but said that his service was soon restored.
Update 9:18 a.m. PT: Skype wrote in an e-mail to CNET this morning that it's "assessing the matter now and its extent. We apologize for the inconvenience caused to our users."
Update 11:12 a.m. PT: Skype then followed that up with a blog post shedding more light on the outage.
According to the company, it "noticed that the number of people online on Skype was falling, which wasn't typical or expected." After investigating the issue, Skype found that "a large number of supernodes," which act as the service's phone directory of sorts, "were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype."
To fix the issue, Skype's engineers are currently "creating new 'mega-supernodes'" that should get the service running normally in "a few hours." Skype's group video chatting feature could take even longer to be fixed.
Update 2:27 p.m. PT: As promised, Skype says that its service is "now returning to normal." However, the company also noted on its Twitter account that it could still "take several hours for everyone to be able to sign in again."
We will continue to share details as we hear more.