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.

Comments

Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't it already shut down a couple of years ago, with mandatory migration to Skype?

Re:Uh

[Dutch Gun]

When asked about the demise of it's long-time rival, ICQ responded only with "uh oh".

The ones who grew up using MSN?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the folks too young for AOL Instant Messenger? And the folks too young for IRC?

Re:The ones who grew up using MSN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we're the ones who had to turn the fucker off every time we got a new Windows machine.

Snake your way through the admin console and find services and turn it off.

Re:The ones who grew up using MSN?

[mikael_j]

Where I grew up IRC was actually popular with the non-nerd crowd until ICQ came around, then that became the "standard" until some time around 2002-2003 when MSN Messenger started taking over more and more and remained the top IM client until Facebook became the one social networking platform to rule them all.

Amazingly enough America Online was never very popular outside the US...

Re:The ones who grew up using MSN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you are wrong; that was not the same. The service you are talking about was used to allow LAN clients to send short messages to each other - intended for admins to be able to send "server rebooting" type messages. It was, of course, abused by malware and even Microsoft eventually recommended turning it off and then disabled it in a service pack. We are, of course, talking about MSN Messenger which is a client server instant messaging program similar to ICQ.

Re:The ones who grew up using MSN?

[Anonymous Coward]

BAH! Back in my day we had to walk across the room to the teletype machine, barefoot, uphill both ways...

I guess I'll just

[Kevin108]

Have to go back to using ICQ.

Re:Good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the guy with the hotmail email address.

Looking for an alternative?

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

NET SEND

[lucm]

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!