* 663M registered accounts
* 145M connected users
* 8M paying users
The 170M number is the most recent update of the 145M connected users number. They define 'connected users' as active within a financial quarter
I have spent the past few hours reading through the SEC filing. Skype is still growing very strongly[3], especially in the key metrics of active (connected) users and paying users (both up 30%)
I think this is a great deal and will work out as well for Microsoft as PayPal did for eBay. See my comment in the other thread about that[2]
As I mentioned in that thread, Skype is not profitable only because they wrote down assets and acquisition costs to the tune of over $350M. Within Microsoft it will profit near $500M this year (my back-of-the-napkin sums by projecting out the old revenue figures with the new growth figures). A PE of 17-19 is not a bad buy, considering the strength of the brand and the large user base.
Skype is probably the largest non-browser web/net application, and likely the second largest social graph after Facebook.
What will be interesting now is the question of if Microsoft will work with Facebook on Skype, or use it as a platform to compete with Facebook.
[1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1498209/0001193125110...
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2531885
[3] From their filing: "We have significantly increased both our free and paying users, growing our average monthly connected users by 38% and average monthly paying users by 19%, from the three months ended December 31, 2009 to the three months ended December 31, 2010."