![]() 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. 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. ![]() It would be sad to see my ancient Hotmail/MSN account go, if for no other reason that I'm impressed it's still running (I never check it and only get spam and the last "proper" email in it was from 2005, I think, before I moved them all out when they started to cut out Outlook Express integration with it - which was the only free way we'll just move on as soon as something affects us personally. Like the Google accounts lately that have had features taken from them, etc. Not much will happen, but - as pointed out - people will be a bit more wary about what they sign up for in the future. And they won't "save" anything by merging accounts because they still can't shut down in China, they still have to track all those accounts, they still have to pay for separate authentication mechanisms in the various software for years to come, etc. And I won't tolerate Skype being broken by MS upgrades without just moving on or sacrificing its functionality entirely. I won't suddenly start using MS features through Skype. I won't suddenly start using MS services that I haven't used in a decade (the IM client kept the account open nicely, though). I don't see what they seek to achieve, to be honest. It's even loaded into my Pidgin and anyone can use it for free. Messing with that just means I move on to something else - hell, I even have my own domain's Jabber setup ready to roll if it comes to it. But the fact is that I haven't run an "official" client in nearly a decade now, and the bit that messenger does can be done on any number of third-party clients. Granted, I'm a freeloader - I've never paid Skype a penny or any of the MSN/Live/Microsoft etc. And that really means that Skype will surge as everyone does this "upgrade" and then die when people learn how atrocious the client is again. I now honestly give it a handful of months before I abandon it except to keep the account live. Skype functionality appearing only in Messenger and Windows, etc.). It's really quite a powerful tool and I was half expecting it to go the other way (e.g. Skype is probably MS's biggest online asset at the moment. Like Skype, I won't have it running "just in case" someone wants to talk to me, and hence they won't use it as much either (if Skype offered a proper API that other programs could use, Pidgin etc. Steam also wants me to message my friends that way - er, no - because it's just a sub-standard chat client that I have a bucket of and numerous alternatives with more features that don't need me and my friends to be running Steam all the time to use them. and video-over-MSN was always a joke in comparison). MS, in particular, has had a bad history with me and their client software - it's been pretty atrocious at points over the years and taking several backward steps (I can't remember the last time I successfully did a messenger file transfer, the various takeovers meant it got more and more plastered with adverts, etc. Honestly, that just means I'll stop using messenger and won't even notice - I still have plenty of alternatives and slowly ditched things in the past as they stopped letting me use them from third-party clients (I still have ICQ, AOL, MSN, YIM, Jabber, and even Facebook messengers plugged into my Pidgin).įact is, I don't really care about running "your" software, just your backend service - and it's just not vital enough that I'd care. The problem I'm more worried about (rather than the bi-annual "upgrade your account to new account X" problem) is what about third-party clients? I have Pidgin plugged in with my messenger details, and presume that will stop. Hell, even Windows 8 wanted me to log in using it and I refused - I haven't actually USED that account in YEARS. Since then it has been an MSN account (where I started using Messenger), a Live account, a Microsoft account, and now it's taking over my Skype. I started with a Hotmail account pre-2000, probably pre-1995 (don't know exactly, but long before I was in uni).
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