Skype just reached a milestone by hitting 2 billion minutes of connections handled daily. To mark the important event, Skype released an infographic that shows the equivalent of 2 billion minutes in more practical terms.

Reckoned to more measurable human activities, it is about 33 million hours of laughter, 1.38 million days of collaboration and circling the globe aboard an aircraft over 700,000 times.

"With numbers like these, it's clear that Skype is for more than just for special occasions," Skype said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Skype is known for free Skype-to-Skype calls, depriving in the process carriers billions of phone charges on international and long-distance calls.

In the earlier part of 2013, Skype announced that it will join forces with Windows Live Messenger. Ahead of the integration, Skype rolled out an upgrade on Windows desktop before it moves on to other platforms.

"We know more users will come over from Messenger, and since the Skype experience provides multiple ways to communicate - not just via IM - we think we will come to try it out and then discover we have a lot of other features," Mashable quoted Skype Corporate VP of Marketing Elisa Steele.

Microsoft is schedule to start connecting Skype and Lync by June 2013, mainly sharing of presence, IM and voice across the two servers, but video connectivity is expected to be linked in the next 18 months.

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