The IT Nerd

The days of MSN Messenger appear to be over. An announcement posted on the Skype blog announced the death of MSN Messenger:

We’ve got good news to share! Skype and Messenger are coming together. Millions of Messenger users will be able to reach their Messenger friends on Skype. By updating to Skype, Messenger users can instant message and video call their Messenger friends.

This effort started with the release of Skype 6.0 for Mac and Windows a few weeks ago, which allows you to sign into Skype using a Microsoft account. Now Messenger users just need to update to the latest version of Skype, sign in using a Microsoft account, and their Messenger contacts will be there.

Our goal remains to deliver the best communications experience for everyone, everywhere. We want to focus our efforts on making things simpler for our users while continuously improving the overall experience. We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 (with the exception of mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available).

At one point, MSN Messenger was the number one Instant Messaging platform. So it’s sad to see it go. But it’s not a surprise as Microsoft spend the GDP of a small country go buy Skype from eBay. So they had to make it work for them somehow.

In the meantime, I’d be upgrading to the latest version of Skype sooner rather than later.

This entry was posted on November 6, 2012 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Microsoft, Skype. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.