http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20984820

RIP Old Friend.

First twinkies, now msn! What's happening?!

don't know what that means for me since i only use it on my xbox, phone and hotmail website. well, i don't really use it at all.

The times. There a changing!

FAILADIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Honestly I don't think I have used it in the last 2-3 years at all. Once I finally made a Facebook account I pretty much just stopped using IM programs. Most of the people I care to speak with are frineds with me on Facebook. That effectively rendered MSN/AIM/ICQ obsolete for me, and I would imagine that it is the same for a lot of others around here. Hell I don't even get on IRC but once every few months now.

40!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bonus

failadin
!

Typical Microsoft jackassery. "The service is believed to be used by about 300 million people every month."

300 million people use it, so let's get rid of it!

"China is the only nation in which Messenger will keep operating, because it is run under licence there."

Lol... I wonder how many of that 300 mil users are in China.

What's the point in shutting it down? Just to try to force users to Skype? Will be sad if AIM goes down too. Surely there's some market for instant messaging outside of facebook?

Yes, and Microsoft is offering you the alternative. What is wrong with Skype?

Gchat ftw

I never used it. Was all AIM for friends / ICQ for you weirdos back in the day.

Now, Skype & GChat.

Gchat.

boo!
luckily I also had most of my contacts in ICQ and skype

i didn't even know it contained a chat client

there's a bit of confusion here, so just so everyone knows:

-the actual Windows Live chat service (the back end) is not going away (yet).

-The only thing that stops working on March 15th is the Windows Live Messenger Client for Windows. Other apps that connect to the service will continue to work

-The service is being rolled into Skype. IF you have Skype 6.0 or higher on Windows, you can sign in with your "Microsoft account" which is just your MSN account. You can then merge your existing skype and MSN accounts into one account, contacts from both will display and you can contact both.

-If you use the messenger apps on the Xbox, Windows 8, Windows Phone, or on the web, nothing will change on March 15th.

-You will be able to IM MSN contacts from within Skype.

However, it is not all sunshine and roses, and the whole thing is eventually going away.

In October of this year Microsoft will turn off XMPP access. That means that most 3rd party clients that use XMPP to connect to the MSN service will stop working (things like pidgin, adium, etc).

In March of 2014 the proprietary part of the protocol that 1st party clients connect to will turn off. This is when MSN will strop working altogether.

THAT is when everything goes to hell, as that means that the official built in apps on things like Windows Phone and Windows 8 will stop working. I'd have to assume that Microsoft will update those platforms to fix this. My guess is that it'll just be Skype built in and that's what'll be used.

Bet you don't know Skype can also login to Facebook and display your Facebook newsfeed directly in Skype (and allow you to chat with Facebook contacts (Facebook chat)).

I only use MSN lately to talk to earth people and for facebook chat:p