by , 1:10 PM EDT, August 16th, 2007

Skype users planning on spending their Thursday chatting may have to find another way to talk online. The company has been experiencing problems that have prevented many subscribers from signing in and using the service.

The company stated that the problem appears to be software related, but it could take until some time Friday to resolve the issue. Once the problem is corrected, the Skype client application will automatically log in even if it has been running during the outage.

Skype is a popular online voice chat client that also supports calling or receiving calls from traditional phone lines and cell phones.

Many users rely on Skype's SkypeOut service for their phone calls, and especially international calls, because of lower per-call rates. So far, that service appears to functioning correctly.

Skype users looking for more information about the outage can check out the Skype Heartbeat Web page.