Home > News Skype to Offer Group Video ChatSkype told potential investors today that they plan to grow their business model by offering group video chat.
Group video chat aims at increasing the number of business users that log in to Skype service. Group also plans extending their monetization models by adding online ads.
Skype user base increased to 560 million at the end of June this year, from 397 million compared to the previous year, showing a substential growth in user base. Average monthly connected users to Skype service also increased to 124 million from 91 million the previous year. Paying customers represent a significantly lower amount of all users, but those paid customers also increased from 6.6 million to 8.1 million this year.
All those increasing figures led Skype to an increase in revenues, $406.2 million in just 6 months of 2010, up approximately 25% from the first half of 2009.
Skype plans growing their user base - both free and paying customers. They are especially interested in small and medium-sized business users those in the need of video chat services, but who cannot afford expensive top-of-the-line video conferencing equipment.
Offering group video chat will be a great opportunity for Skype for increasing the number of paid users who pay for voice call and video chat services. The company is currently testing their new multi-user video chat feature and plans to charge for this multi-user video chat service in next versions. Skype tells that group video calling can generate more revenue by their user base.
Skype also tries implementing ways to better monetize free calling and video chats like adding advertising to their website. Online advertising and licencing revenues represent a small portion of Skype's income, and the company thinks implementing online advertisements will improve their revenues in the future. Skype users who don't pay for premium services are likely to see more ads along with their video chat screens.
The new video chat platform is a great opportunity for Skype to grow their revenues. Whilw video chat calls currently represent a roughly 40% of all calls made through their software, the majority of Skype's revenues are generated by SkypeOut landline and mobile calling service. Skype must find a way to monetize their continuously growing video chat users, otherwise revenue generated by those video chat users will continue to represent a small portion of the company's income. | 
