GETTY Skype is experiencing outages for users in Europe, United States and Australia

Skype is experiencing a serious outage. The hugely successful Microsoft messenger is not working for thousands of users across the globe. Microsoft has confirmed the outage across social media and via the Skype website. The full scale of the blackout is not yet known, although the US firm has revealed that not all of Skype's services have been affected. Thousands of people reported the global outage on website status aggregator Down Detector. "We are working to fix an issue which is preventing some users from logging in & using Skype. We apologize for any inconvenience," the cross-platform messenger tweeted.

We are aware of an issue affecting Skype status at the moment, and are working on a quick fix: http://t.co/ymSzmrgEX0 pic.twitter.com/8LoqqL0hh7 — Skype Support (@SkypeSupport) September 21, 2015

We are working to fix an issue which is preventing some users from logging in & using Skype. We apologize for any inconvenience. — Skype (@Skype) September 21, 2015

Skype is down in Europe. pic.twitter.com/75JLN7wDJo — Alexandre Dreyfus (@alex_dreyfus) September 21, 2015

The first reports of problems with the app began around 11:00 GMT. The Redmond firm says instant messages and Skype for Web are working fine and it is hard at work to restore the rest of the service. Earlier this morning, Skype published a statement on its website: "We have detected an issue that is affecting Skype in a number of ways.

We're working on a fix for this issue Microsoft Statement

"If you're signed in to Skype, you will not be able to change your status and your contacts will all show as offline even if they are online. "As a result, you won’t be able to start Skype calls to them. "A small number of messages to group chats are not being delivered, but in most cases you can still instant message your contacts. "If you aren’t signed in to Skype, you may be experiencing difficulty when attempting to sign in. "Any changes to your Skype account such as your Credit balance or your profile details might take a little while to be displayed. "You may also have difficulty loading web pages on the Skype Community. For that reason, please check back here for future updates. "We're doing everything we can to fix this issue and hope to have another update for you soon. "Thank you for your patience as we work to get this incident resolved." Status aggregator Down Detector claims almost half of all reported issues with Skype are from users having trouble logging into the service. Meanwhile, video and voice calls account for some 28 per cent and the ability to send and receive message account for 27 per cent.

IG Down Detector, an online status aggregator, shows the number of issues with Skype spike this morning

@WholeLottaLore Roger that, we verify there is a problem - stand by for an update on the situation. — Skype Support (@SkypeSupport) September 21, 2015

@SkypeSupport Problem is bigger than than status issues as described in your link. Unable to login or perform any Skype function. — Kieren Williamson (@Assits_Ltd) September 21, 2015

@SkypeSupport my son is sad being unable to talk to his grand parents. Hope to see you back in a good shape soon. — Tomoe Sugihara (@tomo_bassman) September 21, 2015

Skype is a wildly popular cross-platform chat, voice calling and video calling service. Skype software is available on Windows, OS X, smartphones and tablets, including the iPhone, iPad and Android devices. Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 and in 2013 merged Messenger (also known as MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger) with the service.