Anyone who has spent hours of their life communicating with friends and family on Windows Live Messenger may want to shed a small tear on the 15th of March.
This is when the hugely popular messaging system will be switched off for good. The official word from Microsoft is that users should now move onto Skype, and they have already sent out an email of the Messenger users to this effect.
The Chinese Can Keep on Messaging
The Microsoft communication went on to suggest that people start to get used to the Skype service before the Messenger service gets turned off. They can still use the existing service until the end date if they want to, though. In fact, Chinese users can keep going after that but for the rest of the world the end is on the 15th of March.
This move comes more than a year after Microsoft bought Skype for around £5.3 billion. A few months ago the company confirmed that Live Messenger was to be closed down in 2013 but the recent email has been the first confirmation of the definite date for the end of the service.
Live Messenger users can currently talk and send messages to each other using Skype. Now there is also an upgrade button which has been added to the Messenger screen. This will automatically take Messenger off the PC and add on Skype when the user clicks on it.
The Live Messenger service started way back in 1999 and was initially called MSN Messenger. It used by around 300 million people each month and since its introduction has had features like photo sending, games and video calling added to the basic text messaging package.
