Skype contacts are ‘offline’ worldwide due to outage

Skype is not showing online contacts through various Skype applications due to a malfunction. The web version of the chat service still seems to show contacts. Messages via the application would also still come through, Microsoft promises.

This is stated on Heartbeat, a status site of the service where it can be checked whether a problem is local or has to do with the Skype network. The problem seems to be in the system that is supposed to detect the presence of users and pass on the respective status settings, such as online, away and busy.

Users affected by the issues are unable to adjust their status and all contacts appear to be offline. It is therefore not possible to start a Skype conversation. However, messages will be delivered, Microsoft guarantees. The problem does not appear to occur with the Skype for Web client, although it is hard to reach at the time of writing.

It is not clear when the problem will be solved.