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Microsoft Axing Messenger On March 15th
An anonymous reader writes with news that Microsoft is killing Messenger in favor of Skype. From the article: "Microsoft on Tuesday mass emailed its 100 million+ Messenger users to let them know that the service is officially being retired on March 15, 2013. On that date, all users will be migrated to Skype, which Microsoft acquired back in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. This means Messenger will be shut down in just 66 days. It will only keep working afterwards in mainland China, mainly because Skype is operated there by a local provider called TOM."
Relatedly, an anonymous reader asks: "I am looking to build a Skype replacement for me and some friends and was wondering which languages you would use server side to handle all of the encrypted data streaming? I am thinking to use SIP on a centralized server (as NAT can be a pain to get through). The clients will use end-to-end encryption. Thoughts?"
There are some alternatives already, for variable definitions of working.
While this is mostly irrelevant for north american users, MSN messenger, later Windows Live Messenger, was a big part of spanish-speaking internet users lives. Oh, the memories of using it to pick up girls ;) back then when you could add anyone and they wouldn't freak out because "they don't know you", like people do in facebook. Late night chats with groups of people, those annnoying emoticons, pink fonts, useless "winks"... it's all in the past now. Oh yes, and girls showing their boobs on cam as well. Friendships, fights, contact blocks...
To be fair, Facebook chat killed Messenger. It's convenient, simple to use and it works well in small screens like netbook machines.
Microsoft screwed up in their last incarnation of messenger. Demanding real names instead of a nickname, moving the legendary hotmail to "outlook", and making that huge resource hog that messenger 2011 was, with integration to "social" bullshit. So heavy that people couldn't even use their machines if messenger was running.
To date there's no match for messenger's "share photos", which let you drag and drop pictures to the chat window and have them automatically resized and compressed to something more decent, and shown "big" in the chat window. With the option, of course, to download full size and keep (I think yahoo messenger has that but it's irrelevant in spanish-speaking land). This isn't an option on facebook and not even drag-and-drop to send a photo works there (MSN was great: Print-Screen, Ctrl-V to instantly send a screen capture).
I did support for small ISPs over the past decade and it was THE biggest problem if messenger didn't work. People didn't mind that their web browsing didn't work as long as messenger worked.
Skype is in no way a replacement for MSN. Skype was designed to make calls, and that's what it insists in doing. Skype chat is horrible. It doesn't seem to actually "close" if you close it (you have to log out, and then it won't automatically log back in in next boot). And no photo share for skype.
I, for one, will be missing "MSN" as people called it here. Most people won't since they have moved to FB chat long ago.
They made billions because their protocol and software worked, almost every time, even for near-zero-skill users who wouldn't know what a port number is. Install software, get chatting. There are open protocols, but things like SIP take a bit of setting up.