And we thought Facebook was big...

Skype now has 521 million users, a 41% increase over the previous quarter (April-June '09), TechCrunch reports. "That’s a stunning 40 million new registered users in the past three months," it adds. This is not just Internet telephony used for free or incredibly on the cheap by people all over the world. Oprah uses Skype all the time for and on her TV show. Here's her page explaining (and promoting) it – Skype has become one of her sponsors. As for us regular people, TechCrunch continues: "Free Skype-to-Skype minutes grew 74% to 27.7 billion minutes [this past quarter], whereas SkypeOut minutes (which is what members pay for) grew 44% to 3.1 billion minutes."

And we thought Facebook was big...

Skype now has 521 million users, a 41% increase over the previous quarter (April-June '09), TechCrunch reports. "That’s a stunning 40 million new registered users in the past three months," it adds. This is not just Internet telephony used for free or incredibly on the cheap by people all over the world. Oprah uses Skype all the time for and on her TV show. Here's her page explaining (and promoting) it – Skype has become one of her sponsors. As for us regular people, TechCrunch continues: "Free Skype-to-Skype minutes grew 74% to 27.7 billion minutes [this past quarter], whereas SkypeOut minutes (which is what members pay for) grew 44% to 3.1 billion minutes."

Views of Net users young & old: Studies

Lots of international (individual and family) Internet-user data has been released via various studies this past week, courtesy of Symantec, Google, Yahoo, and Skype. Symantec's Norton Online Living Report was very family-oriented, having gathered the views of 9,000 adults and young people in 12 countries! Some interesting findings NetworkWorld led with were that "one in five children admitted getting caught doing something their parents didn't approve of," and parents are using a variety of means to keep better tabs on their kids online activities. "The UK, for example, has the highest usage of software to control Internet use," e.g., filtering or online curfews. A few other interesting findings: "1 in 5 online youth are more willing to communicate with their family about touchy subjects online than on the phone or in person" (great idea - let a text message about your concern kick off a calm parent-child conversation); "89% of online adults and 90% of online children agree that the benefits of using the Internet outweigh the risks," but 60% of parents feel kids spend too much time online. In another just-released sponsored by Google, Yahoo, and Skype, 90% of users in France, Germany, and the UK expect their Internet service providers to offer open and unrestricted access to the Web, Reuters reports. And the New York Times reports that a survey conducted in the US by TRUSTe, the privacy nonprofit, found that "more than 90% of respondents called online privacy a 'really' or 'somewhat' important issue." But in a separate story, the Times asks the good question, "When Everyone's a Friend, Is Anything Private?"