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Microsoft Shutting Down MSN Messenger After 15 Years of Service
New submitter airfuz writes Microsoft took a bold move announcing that users have to move away from the old version of Internet Explorer to the new version 11. And now not long after that, Microsoft announced that they are shutting down the 15-year-old MSN Messenger. Most people have moved away from the service to Facebook and other mobile based messengers such as Whatsapp, and so MSN is left with few users. But still, ending a 15-year messaging service like the MSN Messenger means something to the ones who grew up using it.
Wasn't it already shut down a couple of years ago, with mandatory migration to Skype?
You mean the folks too young for AOL Instant Messenger? And the folks too young for IRC?
"One's"? Really?
Isn't MSN and Skype supposed to be merged?? When I open Skype it gives me the chance to login with my MSN credentials (haven't tried because I don't have one).
it only took 7 years before Flight Simulator couldnt be activated properly in newer versions of windows. Is it time for another discussion of what paying for software means to the development company vs. consumer? F%ckwads
will work for dragon quest localization
:-D
I know it's probably from tFA, but really, "the one's who grew up using it"?
BAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Have to go back to using ICQ.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out ...
No, wait. Nobody cares.
Well, I was a teenager when MSN Messenger was being touted to the masses in the early 2000s. They were giving it a big push with Windows XP at the time. Things were still much in dial-up. Broadband was not in yet. Neither was watching videos online, much less YouTube. There was no Google yet either. Google Search came about 5 years after MSN Messenger's big push. I was about to become upset until I realized that these things happen all the time. Some service you like get shut down for no good reason. I don't use MSN Messenger. I use mostly Yahoo Messenger (it was the other big contender to MSN Messenger, AIM was big), text messages (for people not into too much tech), or even just email (with my "techy" friends and FOSS stuff). I used to visit Bloglines.com multiple times per day. They shut things down even though hundreds of thousands of users protested. They could have sold that thing for half a million. Somebody would have bought it--at least recover hardware and software costs. Since this will continue to happen, my solution is to keep an semi-offline repository of my goodies. When Bloglines went away, my sweet little collection of blogs nearly went away unless I did not save my list someplace. Now I have a list of bookmarks to all my favorite blogs, stored offline. Like that bookmark syncing stuff in new FF. I don't want it because the chances are good it will be taken away from me. And the issues of trust, and what are they doing wit my data. Human beings psychologically want a degree of control of their environment and life. I'm just doing my part to ensure I have a comfortable amount of it. Some of these services are hosted on somebody elses server (nowadays called the cloud). I'll host these files on my own computer and devices because I can control it better. I don't get to sync stuff? Ah, I'll think of something which works for me.
http://retroshare.sourceforge....
It's an IM program. Fully decentralised. All communications encrypted, authenticated by swapping public keys to make a contact. Supports realtime chat, mail, even distributed forums. Also excellent file sharing capability. The protocol is written to support voice or video, but the client doesn't include that. It can't be shut down, it's near-impossible to monitor without compromising an end-point, and it's very difficult to block at a network level without blocking all SSL traffic. Use it and annoy the NSA.
Not my project, I've no involvement at all. I just think it's really good. I've quite a few friends on it now. It's like the old WASTE, except less buggy and still under active development.
Few users? They are the ones who pretty much kicked everybody out when they acquired Skype.
Yeah I don't get it. They pushed every off of messenger and onto skype, which is why there's only a few users left. If you were using Pidgin, you could still connect to t he messenger servers, but if you were using the actual messenger client it forced you onto skype. So much ado about nothing?
at 2 PM Sunday in a silver minivan. It'll be parked next to the eWorld reunion in the phone booth.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
...means something to the one's who grew up using it.
Yeah, it means there is a need for remedial grammar.
I grew up with black-and-white TVs ... ending that for something better was really no hardship, and I didn't miss it. ... should I have an attachment to a 15-year-old lamp?
I also discard old furniture when it wears and no longer meets the needs
(perhaps you do, I try to be tolerant of others' kinks, but I really don't)
phim hai chau tinh tri https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Have to go back to using ICQ. -- It's a perfect time for being wasted. A perfect time to watch the stars. - Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Oh I'm sorry.
Slashdot editor's on weekend's are three year old's.
It's sad to be illiterate. It's even sadder to be illiterate and not know's it's.
Bluewave, 'nuff said.
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
Reliable as ever.
Older versions of MSN (Pre microsoft takeover) didn't have forced updates, thus never experienced the mandatory migration to skype.
They shut the service down along time ago, shortly after they bought skype. If you try to sign it it just fails and says you must upate to skype. I know, we had a problem with my wifes work only allowing messenger on her pc, they wouldnt install skype or any other messenger. I ended up putting skype portable on a usb drive and she ran it from there.
... at any rate, I've long since forgotten the password, or they deactivated the ID, or something... really wasn't interested in it anyways so I never put much thought into trying to reactivate it or sign up for a new one.
. . . to the billions of the rest fo us.
ICQ/Yahoo/GTalk/Skype/IRC - were all far better than MSN garbage. MSN was always a distraction IM system that gained popularity due to microsoft forcing people into MSN e-mail accounts and buying hotmail.
I'm glad to see it going away. One less thing for pidgin/trillian to have to work with (note: the MSN accounts on the multi-messengers are the *only* ones I recall ever not really transferring files correctly)
This is really appalling.
*from any computer to any computer*
That was something MSN messenger could do, the other only worked on the local network.
They are different in a very important way that matters to this conversation: One is MSN messenger (the topic of the conversation) the other is not. So yeah, kind of important to know the difference.
I tried MSN messenger years and years ago. As far as messengers go they were no competition to Yahoo messenger or AIM,Aim being the king. Its been at least 10 years since i had MSN messenger and noway in the gods green earth i would use Skype. Yahoo was my Fav it had before MSN and AIM. In the beginning Yahoo and MSN were most used by web cam swingers and showoffs. mostly unwelcome dick flashers. Men are such dicks
Jack of all trades,master of none
Hi. Its like its January 17, 2013 all over again! Look here and you will see some of the news sites reporting it. But thanks to the intrepid /. staff for keeping us up to date!
I remember we were having a blast with NET SEND at the office, using it to talk shit between developers.
It allowed for short messages only (like twitter), and no incriminating evidence was left behind so no holds barred... Until we found out that each message is automatically logged by Windows and that the sysadmin we had made fun of in those messages had been reading our clever discussions for months... Good times!
lucm, indeed.
What are you wearing?
PIR!
After MSNM 6.5, they ruined the client completely.
Back then, you could even have fun add-ons for MSN that could let you do fun stuff with names, display pictures.
Instead of working with the modding community, which was huge with MSN, they made MSNM 7 harder to mod, which killed off so many things.
Likewise that was just around the time they started slowly strangling the rest of the MSN Services, one by one, including one they could have made glorious, MSN Spaces.
But instead they continued to fight their OWN community until everyone else left it.
Personally, I'm waiting for a good decentralized solution.
Hopefully Bittorent Chat will fit that.
I think most are missing the politics.
This is surprising, coming as it does on the heels of Microsoft's refusal to comply with the U.S. Federal court order to hand over overseas held emails.
So I will spell out some of the political consequences here.
The service closure forces a service switch on the remaining people who were using non-Microsoft MSN clients and thus avoiding the Guangming, which operates the Chinese version of Skype, which has been modified "to support Internet regulations", which is to say The Great Firewall of China. If these users want comparable services, the only comparable one now available to them is Tencent’s QQ messaging software, which from the start has been designed "to support Internet regulations". So there are no longer any "too big to shoot in the head" options which do NOT "support Internet regulations".
So really the only people who care about this will be Chinese dissidents who want to communicate with each other using an encrypted channel through a server inaccessible to the Chinese government, and any journalists seeking an encrypted channel whereby they can move information out of China without having to have a government approved satellite uplink handy, or a willingness to smuggle out data storage some other way.
Mine stopped connecting ~a year ago as the servers went down. Not sure what this is about older versions and such, neither will work without servers.
Boo ! I never ever used because other at the other end never learned how as every thing has to be signed in it would be nice if like a phone call you could just dial Facebook sucks I do not get it my self what do messenger and suck face have in common. Any way things change and not always for the better. While I got maybe someone attention. 911 was an inside job. Israeli hand in hand with the Rothschild gang and of course big stinky oil. Really believe their blood money they are going to succeed where Alexander the said Great and others of his kind failed in the world domination business, who but billionaires with nothing useful to do as they themselves or useless things. L.B..J. killed his own sister and others he was a sick man the killing of J.F.K. gave the keys to the new world order nuts. Since the bankers to control as puppet masters of near everything in 1913 they were for a time happy as pigs in shit loads of money. Then when Kennedy was going to dismantle one of their main enforcers the C.I.A into a thousand pieces and by passed their control on the public control with debt not to mention stop the killing and waste which is the military industrial COMPLEX Johnson would be allowed to kill the man that was of the people and for the people. CAN YOU imagine what the world would be like if Kennedy had stop the war saved and return the population out of debt to machine of wars and stopped big stinky oil. WE ALL WOULD BE DRIVING ELECTRIC CARS 90% OF ELCTRICAL POWER WOULD COME FROM SOLAR TIDAL AND WIND. Global warming and the end of the world would be under control. WE have to imprison every billionaire as killing them is to kind. Jailed in isolation is the only way open their eyes to the suffering they are responsible. I unlike them would not keep them there for more then five years but no less then two. their thief of wealth would go back into schools hospitals and all manner of human need> Those responsible for death on mass would be put to vote being remove for the page of life or not.
Don't worry, globaljustin is a known troll and he is just pimping you to get a rise.
His arguments tend to be tantamount to, "disregarding all the fundamental differences, a circle and a triangle are exactly the same! You asshole!"
It's not even specious reasoning he uses, it's just plain disingenuous misdirection and prevarication.
FWIW, I knew the difference between Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger, and "net send".
the only issue I have with MSN messanger, AOL IM (forgot the name), ICQ is receiving friends requests from complete strangers. Don't know how they found me. Maybe my profile was set to public. I forgot. Also, there is a ton of spam in the public chat rooms.
My friends moved from ICQ to MySpace then to Facebook. I therefor stopped using instant messaging programs.
And then the Windows that is crap by design.
Webkit/Chromium and Linux are the future.
Microsoft Messenger got a bad reputation as a target for spim (IM spam). It was enabled up to WINXP SP2 which finally disabled it by default, but by then it was an abandoned protocol because almost all users turned it off in earlier Windows OS to block the spim. It became a ghost town haunted by spammers like most Yahoo groups.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
i seriously thought it was shut down years ago.
They shut it down for everyone bar China for some reason. This must be the day they turn China off too...
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
I think they will focus more on skype since they have purchased it years ago. I just hope that the quality of skype will remain at the highest peak. Since they're really providing such high standard of services, skype's conference call quality is really outstanding.
Good riddance to this POS that I never used once, but had to uninstall hundreds of times and kill thousands more times.
It's unfortunate that pre-loading crapplets is not a state jail felony.
i'll let my comment history on /. stand for itself
you, AC, are confusing disagreement with trolling
just because someone offers a counterpoint doesn't mean it's "trolling"...also, if you type idiotic bullshit that gets modded up, you might receive a harsh response...an on-topic, non-trolling harsh response
the point is, AC, you can't label anything you don't like "trolling"
Thank you Dave Raggett