Skype is coming slowly back online: the service had about 80% of its normal users online as of noon ET, according to a video posted to the Skype Big Blog by CEO Tony Bates.
The core voice and IM service are mostly working again, but some other services like offline IM and group video chat will take longer to restore. That's because Skype had to take some of the servers dedicated to those services and move them over to create dedicated supernodes for the service.
Supernodes are essentially directory services that route calls, and they normally live on client PCs--any computer using Skype can become a supernode, as this blog post explains. The service went down when a bunch of these user supernodes all went offline at once, perhaps because of a flawed update or security breach in the Skype software.
Bates also apologized for the outage and said the company is investigating how it can return money to loyal paying customers. Stay tuned to the Skype Big Blog for future updates on the refund process.
