In a world where more and more things are cloud-based, downtime has evolved from an inconvenience to a real problem for users who have come to depend on such services.
Earlier this week, Skype suffered from a widespread outage, causing disruption for millions of users. Over the last 24 hours, the company has brought most of its network back online, just in time for Christmas
As an apology, the company is offering users 30 minutes of usage free, according to a post on its blog:
Nothing can make up for the missed experiences, but we’re going to be sending our Pay As You Go and Pre-Pay users a Skype Credit voucher via email. The voucher can be used to give you approximately 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world.
For our active subscribers, we will credit you with a week’s extra subscription service.
That’s a quality move on Skype’s part in my opinion. In a world where no company can offer perfect service, having a company be genuinely sorry for issues is refreshing.
Skype’s name has been in the news today for another reason. There are rumors circulating that the company will be making several video-releated announcements at CES, which is just around the corner. According to Engadget’s Chris Ziegler, Skype users with iPhone 4s (and presumably current-gen iPod touch devices) will soon be able to video chat using their handsets.
That is a Christmas present I can get excited about.
December 24, 2010
iPad, iPhone