SAN FRANCISCO, USA - Twitter was briefly overloaded as users searched for answers about the Skype outage now affecting its entire network of millions of customers. The online telephone company has become a mainstream tool for businesses in all sectors of the economy.

In recent years the film industry has discovered the wonders of using Skype as project collaboration tool in the post-production process. Not only did Skype change the way people communicate using the web, but it has created a go-to tool that other companies have had difficulty to implement themselves.

The share-screen function allows users to see what each other are doing on their computers allowing virtual editing suites to exist as people from different countries such as graphic designers and film editors can collaborate.

From small business to film studios, skype is now seen as an industry wide tool that is indispensable.

How skype works:

Skype isn't a network like a conventional phone or IM network instead, it relies on millions of individual connections between computers and phones to keep things up and running. Some of these computers are what we call supernodes they act a bit like phone directories for Skype. If you want to talk to someone, and your Skype app can t find them immediately (for example, because they re connecting from a different location or from a different device) your computer or phone will first try to find a supernode to figure out how to reach them. skype.com

Latest update from skype: Our engineers and site operations team are working non-stop to get things back to normal thanks for your continued patience - Twitter