Microsoft Retiring Messenger, Replacing It With Skype 213
Entropy98 writes "Windows Live Messenger will be shut down by March 2013, after nearly 13 years of service, so Microsoft can focus its efforts on Skype, its recent $8.5bn acquisition. No word on whether users will be able to transfer their WLM accounts to Skype. 'According to internet analysis firm Comscore, WLM still had more than double the number of Skype's instant messenger facility at the start of this year and was second only in popularity to Yahoo Messenger. But the report suggested WLM's US audience had fallen to 8.3 million unique users, representing a 48% drop year-on-year. By contrast, the number of people using Skype to instant message each other grew over the period.'"
ICQ (Score:2, Interesting)
FTW
Re: (Score:2)
Pidgin ftw!
Re:ICQ (Score:5, Insightful)
talk me@somesever.edu
FTW :)
Re: (Score:2)
jabber.org + pidgin (or anything else XMPP) = win
Re:ICQ (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is afaict there are no open implementations of the skype protocol. There is an API but iirc you have to keep the skype client running to use it and platform support is somewhat limited. Here in the UK msn messenger (or whatever MS is calling it this month) seems to be the dominant IM network. If those users migrate to skype it will be a PITA.
Re:ICQ (Score:5, Informative)
Here in the UK msn messenger (or whatever MS is calling it this month) seems to be the dominant IM network
I'm only one data-point, but a lot of people I know directly or indirectly seem to have switched away from MS's IM. It usually starts with using Facebook's IM for contacts that are on there then slowly logging into MSN/Live/what-ever less and less often until they don't bother at all (and reverting to mobile phone text messages for communicating with people who are not on facebook).
Re: (Score:3)
Re:ICQ (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ICQ (Score:4, Insightful)
FTW
The tanks are built, troops have amassed (Score:3, Interesting)
Skype, Surface, Xbox, now a phone, Windows 8, maps, office, voice recognition, skydive, etc etc.
They hold many cards old Microsoft, now that they've starting to tie all these components into a single working organism, along side the sinking share price of Apple. The battlegrounds have been set and this is the first move of Microsoft's new borgification.
What is going to happen is this, we're going to start seeing consolidated product offerings of this calibre which will be focused in reshaping the lounge roo
Oh boy (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.slate.com/articles/technol/technology/2012/11/microsoft_surface_why_is_the_new_tablet_so_much_worse_than_the_ipad.html [slate.com]
Indeed they have, the axis of evil is on the march. Pity it is the Italians, feared by none, their tech out of date before the first shot is fired.
I haven't used skype in ages, Xbox is the only gaming platform I don't own, W8 phones need to be insanely subsidized and when you google for "sales record W8 phone" you get pictures of thumble weeds.
Windows 8 is universally despised and it just a copy cat of Unity and Gnome in an attempt to alienate users.
Maps? MS has maps? Gosh... that should tell you something about it, honestly didn't know they had.
Office... they had that for over a decade, for matter they also have had phones etc etc for that long.
You are saying that MS has all the tools to lock people in. Yes. That is what everyone else thought... and then iOS and Android happened and showed that the lockin wasn't as tight as everyone thought. Rim got big because they locked you into exchange and surely that was essential. Where is Rim now? Where is the exchange lockin? GONE! Suddenly every boss has a macbook and insists the office systems work with it and screw MS attempts to create a windows only network.
I have no doubt that MS would love to see the parents posts brainfart happen for real but they had two decades to get it done, why should they succeed now when for the first time there is some serious competition and the computing landscape has changed forever?
No doubt oztiks grandparent was in that bunker, grasping his headless dead leader screaming "come on, we got the enemy right were we want them, we can win it!"
The battle has been lost, all MS can do right now is try to not loose the office desktop too.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm sure it will also be released on Windows 2095
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Not sure if joking or serious, as I actually do that .
AOL wins! (Score:2, Funny)
AOL IM finally won! Good job AOL!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It (well, ICQ but same shit) was the first one over here. But then for whatever reason people switched to MSN.
Personally I belong in the camp who used IRC and never saw why I needed ICQ to begin with.
Re: (Score:2)
And because MSN had far less advertising.
Atleast that's why I dumped ICQ like the bag of trash that it was.
Windows Live Messenger Integration (Score:2, Informative)
Umm... Skype 6.0 already began integrating WLM and Skype accounts. See http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/24/3547644/skype-6-0-mac-windows-release
Re:Windows Live Messenger Integration (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm... Skype 6.0 already began integrating WLM and Skype accounts.
It's a shame Skype got bought out. It's already getting bloaty and beginning to suck in various ways.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
bloaty: Noun. A weasel word for things I don't like.
Defining "bloaty" (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Is "performing noticeably worse on old, low-cost, small-form-factor, or battery-powered hardware than the previous version" precise enough?
Or... has lots of features that add to the application size or load that aren't valued by 99% of the user base.
Re:Windows Live Messenger Integration (Score:4, Interesting)
Skype used to run fine on my netbook. It insists on updating itself - there's no way to stay on old versions. It got more and more sluggish with time - it took longer to launch and the video call quality decreased.
Now when I run it it pops up a message saying "Your computer speed is very slow"
http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows/Your-computer-speed-is-very-slow/td-p/385505 [skype.com]
Skype used to work fine on machines that were a lot more underpowered than a netbook even on connections that were a lot slower than my current 50Mbit down 8Mbit up DSL.
If you can't get crappy video in CIF-like [wikipedia.org] resolution to work over an 8Mbit uplink given a dual core Atom with SSE at 1.6Ghz, I'd say the word bloated is about right. Especially if, as I suspect in the Skype case, the problem is not that you don't have the CPU horsepower to compress the video but that the app wraps up efficient video codec into a large application such that the video codec bit gets starved out. Of course if you have a fast CPU you probably don't have this problem. Still older versions of Skype actually worked a lot better on the same hardware, and even older versions used to run perfectly with a slower CPU and a slower connection. And it's not like it's impossible to decouple the video codec from the rest of the application and run it at a higher priority.
Skype for whatever reason just decided to put up a passive aggressive warning was easier than making their software work on netbooks when they found the issue during testing (why else was the warning code put in?). Even though realistically a lot more people are going to run Skype on a netbook than on a developer class laptop.
It's actually typical of modern Microsoft that they've bought something like Skype long after it has passed its prime. Skype a decade ago worked very well indeed. Modern Skype seems to be getting worse and worse. Still I'm sure the WinRT rewrite will solve all these issues, because one thing modern Microsoft APIs are known for is reducing bloat and making code run well on low end hardware.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And if I go back to 4.2.0.187 Secunia PSI flags it as vulnerable - e.g.
http://secunia.com/advisories/47856/ [secunia.com]
It's not clear if this vulnerability only affects 5.x or if the 4.x code is vulnerable too. Plus it still complains about the machine being slow.
Re:Windows Live Messenger Integration (Score:5, Insightful)
It started getting bloated long before Microsoft acquired them. Anything that doesn't have to do with making calls or chatting is bloat. Integrated social networking? Advertisements to "spark conversations"?
Re: (Score:2)
False.
You might as well call a radio in a car 'bloat'.
It seems bloated because it's slow to respond. It also is difficult to completely shut down; which is unforgivable.
Re: (Score:2)
It also is difficult to completely shut down; which is unforgivable.
Right click in task bar - quit skype
Re:Windows Live Messenger Integration (Score:4, Insightful)
Skype has been too integrated and full of crap and ads for a while now.
Re:Windows Live Messenger Integration (Score:4, Informative)
Turn the ads off then. There's an option in the Skype settings to do so (think it's around Notifications somewhere). Old versions just expose you to security vulnerability that are fixed in newer versions, not to mention older protocols and lower quality codecs.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a shame Skype got bought out. It's already getting bloaty and beginning to suck in various ways.
Skype is the new Hotmail. Skypers are migrating to Google Talk in droves.
Gtalk/Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Hasn't everyone stopped using AIM/MSN and moved on to Gtalk/Facebook Messenger?
Re:Gtalk/Facebook (Score:5, Funny)
No. Not everyone is 12.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it just boils down to people having the FB app running on mobile devices and it becomes the de facto way to reach them. At that point why launch anything else...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What's wrong with IRC?
Unfederated (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
With Skype HD you can see if the 24yo with 5 years of advanced Math and a security clearance is trolling you with his latest persona.
A web cam is justly commended as a remedy for social and trolling diseases found on irc.
Re: (Score:3)
IRC is fine as a chatroom protocol. It's not so hot as an IM protocol. Nicks are poor as a way of idenfitying users due to the fact that many users change them to indicate status and in many cases nick ownership is not enforced but nicks are the only identifier you can use to query if a user is online. Further there is no command to take a list of users and give you all their statuses at once and combined with the relatively dumb rate limiting system* this makes updating a buddy list slow even if the nicks
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. Governments have put a lot of effort into forcing interoperability on telecommunications lines, yet on the internet it's becoming all proprietary. I guess the difference is the cutting-edge nature. Like it or not, systems like Facebook and MSN/Skype identified deficiencies in existing protocols and were able to provide improvments far more quickly than if an industry standard had to be developed. They also work better for being under centralised control.
Ultimately I hope, once things mature, th
Re: (Score:2)
IRC is fine as a chatroom protocol. It's not so hot as an IM protocol. Nicks are poor as a way of idenfitying users due to the fact that many users change them to indicate status and in many cases nick ownership is not enforced but nicks are the only identifier you can use to query if a user is online. Further there is no command to take a list of users and give you all their statuses at once and combined with the relatively dumb rate limiting system* this makes updating a buddy list slow even if the nicks are stable.
Some servers, like Rizon, allow users to register their usernames. So that can help as far as the "identifying the user" business. Pidgin lets you use IRC quite a bit like IM. You can add IRC usernames to your buddy list like you would on any IM network, combine them with other logins for a single "online/offline" indicator per person. Talking to a person in a separate tab from the channel you're in makes the entire convo private massages between the two of you. You can also add IRC chatrooms to your buddy
Re: (Score:2)
What's wrong with IRC?
The IRC Chat clients which only a geek could love.
Multiple networks (mIRC lists over fifty) and hundreds of channels but none with a critical mass of users.
Re:Gtalk/Facebook (Score:5, Funny)
What's wrong with IRC?
Young whipper-snapper. In my day we used "talk" from the command line! We didn't need any fancy IRC doo-dads or color tags. We didn't pull any of that slap with a trout nonsense either! It was a simpler time, and we liked it!
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure why I'd want to audio or video chat. Text chat is simply better.
Re:Gtalk/Facebook (Score:5, Funny)
I still can't bring myself to kill my ICQ account. Some people collect stamps. Others collect figurines. I collect dead social networks.
Re:Gtalk/Facebook (Score:5, Funny)
I collect dead social networks.
That answers my question why you're on slashdot.
/ducks
Re: (Score:2)
I use what my friends use, and unfortunately most of them are still using lame networks.
Re: (Score:2)
I still see many still using YM and AIM. One using ICQ and a few MSN. Many with GTalk. I don't use Facebook so no comments on that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need to actually use Facebook. Just connect Pidgim, Adium or wathever client you use to the service. You can even use OTR if you are paranoid.
Re: (Score:2)
Smells like a bundled update... (Score:2)
Not sure I like the sound of that.
The last thing I want is some election year halfwit or spammer suddenly popping up on my desktop to expound their views or blast me with unwanted content. Better be a big DISABLE button somewhere easy to find.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Show 'em the DONG!
Re:Smells like a bundled update... (Score:5, Funny)
If that happens, you could just do what most people on ChatRoulette do....
Show 'em the DONG!
Might I suggest you use a more widely accepted currency like the US dollar, Euro or British Pound. You'll never get a good exchange rate on Dong outside Vietnam.
Facebook Chat killed it (Score:4, Insightful)
There, I said it. Nobody I know uses Messenger anymore, but practically everyone is using Facebook Messenger. Some have basically replaced both IM and email with it.
Re:Facebook Chat killed it (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh.. I guess I'm nobody then. And so is my list of about 15 people I chat everyday on it with.
I like Windows Live Messenger.. it's simply, it doesn't suck like Skype, and it doesn't require Facebook. I use gTalk sometimes too, but that seems to be an Android user thing; people with iPhones rarely use gTalk, even when logged into GMail. As it is, this really pisses me off, because I really like Windows Live Messenger. It's going to be a real mess for me to find one way to talk to all these people after it goes away..
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I can vouch for this. Since facebook became popular I only every see one other person logging into my msn chat, and we don't chat via it anyway. Out of almost 40 people, nobody uses it or their hotmail.com addresses anymore, some have not logged in for years. I pretty much keep it there just for posterity (I've been on msn since if first came out, ironically, also because everyone just shifted to using msn messenger and I had no choice but to follow or lose contact) but will probably not notice if it
Re: (Score:2)
The great thing is that instant messaging and emailing/PMing is the same thing in Facebook and you seamlessly transfer between them.
Re: (Score:2)
MSN Messenger (or whatever they're calling it these days) is still the dominant IM network in Canada, and still held a 40% global marketshare as of a year ago. Facebook chat has certainly risen in use, but it's not typically used as an IM client outside of the website itself.
Re: (Score:2)
And then there is this talk again about people replacing email with something.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody that I know uses facebook messenger. Why in the world would you use something like that to chat with people?
Because most people (outside of Slashdot) already have Facebook accounts, and use them at least to some extent, even if not to post. Also because official Facebook chat client is available on pretty much every mobile platform.
Pidgin has no Skype support. (Score:2)
Pidgin has no Skype support. You have to run real Skype to do Skype chat. There is a plugin to let you manage contacts.
Re: (Score:2)
It appears the Pidgin devs have an excuse to never update their MSN support either, now.
Support for the current MSN protocol features has been waiting for some time, with MSN logging-in even breaking a couple of times (because the method being used was from a version of MSN that the network no longer supported). A band-aid patch is applied to get text working again but other features continued to drop off one-by-one. I can't even do group chats reliably anymore with the current support.
Re: (Score:2)
What about Messenger on Xbox (Score:2)
"Maybe" on accounts, but "yes" on contacts (Score:3)
>> No word on whether users will be able to transfer their WLM accounts to Skype.
From TFA: "To ease the changeover, Microsoft is offering a tool to migrate WLM messenger contacts over."
Re:"Maybe" on accounts, but "yes" on contacts (Score:5, Informative)
"Yes" on accounts as well, as anyone who installed Skype v6 (or the earlier betas) can attest - the very first thing it does is suggest that you input your WLM / MS account info so that it can link the two. If you do, it doesn't just migrates contacts - from there on it effectively operates as WLM client, letting you chat with those people who still use WLM (or any third-party client using the same protocol), and letting them send messages to your WLM address which you then see as Skype chats. Furthermore, it lets you log in using your MS account rather than Skype username. And if you don't have a Skype account at all, you can just log in with MS account, and then that becomes your Skype username.
So the more accurate description is that services are transparently merged, and WLM client is retired in favor of Skype client.
That's a surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
it's another Microsoft change for the sake of change
Yeah, clearly, consolidating your messaging applications so that you only have one, rather than two, is "change for the sake of change." Because it makes far more sense to continue to support and develop both of them, I guess.
Your bias may be showing, Mr. AC. ;) :)
Sounds (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, they already replaced the cutesy bubbly log-on sound with an obnoxious robot middle-management guy saying "yOu haVe SIGNED IN!" It's Microsoft, so they'll make their unmistakable mark on it somehow, for sure.
Get rid of the backdoors (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:2)
I fought like the devil not to get on Skype, but it was company policy that I had to have it, so now I have it, and now they have decided it is TEH SUCK and are replacing it with Google Talk.
Trillian still works for me and that is what all my outside contacts use.
3rd party clients... (Score:2)
It wouldn't surprise me if this move by Microsoft is designed to kill off 3rd party clients (many such clients exist for MSN Messenger, all efforts to produce one for Skype have so far failed for legal and/or technical reasons)
Re: (Score:2)
Skype has already integrated WLM support, and third party clients seem to work just fine for it. The protocol itself is not retired (and probably won't be anytime soon, since it'll make many existing devices unable to use it), only the WLM client itself is - Skype just adds support for it, and integrates accounts from both services so that you only need to log into one.
Way to go MS (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
They have the best IM client on the market (well, the newest versions suck for their UI, but the older ones are great), and they go and kill them off in favour of a software that serves a completely different purpose.
How does Skype "serves a completely different purpose"? It's an IM client with voice and video chat; so is WLM. Yes, Skype also has the ability to call phone numbers and send SMS directly, but that's an extra feature on top of the IM core - most people use it for Skype-to-Skype communication.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
And most people I know who use WLM use it for all sorts of things like play games together, share control of certain programs, do remote assistance with their parents, work on documents together because you can tie it with office. Plus, it has an enterprise version that connects with the entire office suite (most importantly outlook) and works with exchange and AD for some truly awesome features.
Skype on 360 (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
No single client solution (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's the client that's being retired here, not the protocol (for now, at least).
Impact on Microsoft Lync? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what the impact is on Lync? I would guess it's based on Messenger to some extent.
What about Remote Assistance? (Score:3)
That's pretty much the only reason I still have Messenger installed any more.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Google Chrome remote desktop add on.
Too bad :) :( (Score:2)
IM systems rise and fall on the quality of their smiley faces.
AIM had an extensive array of smileys baked into the product just not easily accessible in the free version unless you kept a library of font sml tags that could be cut and pasted.
Microsoft had some nice smiles too but the best feature was flash based nudges with ufos and kid throwing snowballs.
Open source clients I have tried over the years suffer from low quality smiley faces and thrills.
I think moving forward we need to take control of the en
Steam (Score:3)
I haven't needed an IM client for years since Steam hit critical mass among my friends. If and other friends, family, or work people need to message me they can txt or email.
MSN/Windows/Live Messenger has been a pain in the ass ever since Windows XP would end up loading each of those as separate clients to do the same thing.
XMPP (Score:2)
I wish I could retire my msn account but unfortunately it's still the preferred IM system for most here in the UK.
Personally I have my own xmpp server running for IM. Not only is it open but it's also means that I'm in control of my contacts & know that, if it fails it's my own fault ;-)
If I need to talk to someone on Google Talk or other xmpp severs its no problem as its federated correctly so I'm pretty much covered.
I'm just wondering what those insisting on msn will do now or the chaos when this happ
Re: (Score:2)
yes, probably down to them thinking that implementing s2s would devalue it somehow - facebook chat doesn't have s2s either
.NET on Windows Phone 7.8 (Score:2)
Apparent abandonment of .net - Not a supported framework for metro, winphone, winRT.
I thought the .NET Framework was still the only way to make apps for Windows Phone 7.8.
Re: (Score:2)
It is also still the only way to make apps for WP8. You can use native C++ for libraries (or, rather, WinRT components), but .NET is your only choice to work with XAML.
Re: (Score:2)
I've heard some positive reviews for their Surface tablets, actually. "Live Drive" is currently "Sky Drive" I think?
And you didn't mention Windows 7. IMO, it's actually pretty good. I prefer it much more to Windows XP, and it's actually more stable, IMO. Of course, not surprising, but still.
And Skype, they are doing a good job of supporting platforms, it seems. Everyone and their dog were predicting they'd drop Linux support, but they seem to be more inclined to support it than errr the company Skype w
Re:Microsoft's recent shocking displas of sense. (Score:4, Informative)
Apparent abandonment of .net - Not a supported framework for metro, winphone, winRT.
.NET is a supported framework [microsoft.com] for Win8/WinRT, as well as [msdn.com] all incarnations of Windows Phone (in fact, for WP, you have to use it for UI layer).
Silverlight is not gone, really, it just got rewritten in native code and rebranded "XAML" (for Windows Store apps).
Re:No thanks. (Score:4, Informative)
If I'm going to go with one big evil super corporation with ties to government agencies and concerns about privacy and yadda yadda, I might as well use the one I've used for years that is between free and super cheap and way less bloated -- Google Voice.
Google Voice is a internet based Answering Machine. It does not support Video.
Google Talk is a slightly proprietary Jabber (XMPP) client that includes Voice and Video streams on some devices.
Neither is exactly like Skype.
Re: (Score:2)
Google+ Hangouts is the closest equivalent to Skype in Google-land.
Re: (Score:2)
Please do not feed the pedants. I have started using my google account for video conferencing and found it to be better than Skype when there are bandwidth problems (why we decided to try it). I also found Oovoo better in the same situation. Several issues with Skype make it a problem for me but it is much more suitable for terrorists etc. as it does not store any data... Great for the tinfoil hat brigade but if you send a message to someone who is not online, they do not get that message if you are not