

Microsoft and Skype to axe world's most popular IM client early 2013 - esalazar
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/07/microsoft_messenger_kill_date/

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TeMPOraL
Skype client should be axed instead. It's a pile of ugly looking mess and eats
half of computer's resources. I dread to turn it on anywhere else than on my
overpowered home PC. And don't even get me started on the Android client. It's
completely useless on a high-powered tablet, and equally useless on a low-
powered phone.

I remember the times when official IM clients were lightweight and pleasant to
use. Now you either have to go to third party / open source stuff (WTW,
Pidgin, you name it), or just keep that GMail and Facebook tabs open.

~~~
rbn
Skype has a Win8 App

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
It does indeed. But have you used it? It is missing most of Skype's features
and requires you to sign in using a Live Account.

Merging Live and Skype Accounts is a problem for me personally since I want to
use Skype on insecure WiFi (and obviously my Live account is also an e-mail
account).

~~~
icebraining
What's the problem? As long as your terminal is secure, the channel should be
safe even over insecure Wifi, since the Skype client has a copy of the
certificate of the server and can therefore authenticate it.

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citricsquid
I still use MSN and I guess I don't really mind, MSN has a lot of history but
it's a mediocre client and Skype is much better. I used to have 100s of
contacts on MSN with ~50 online at any one time, now everyone that used MSN
_casually_ uses Facebook chat so I have... 2 people online (both of which are
listed as away) and anyone that uses IM seriously seems to use Skype. It was
inevitable.

Does anyone here still use MSN? They say it's the most popular client, but
that doesn't fit my current experience, I guess China makes up the majority of
that usage? Of the people I know that still use MSN they just have it running
because why not, they don't actively use it. That's how I use it.

~~~
meaty
I use it to talk to my other half whilst in the office - that is it.

I'll switch to IRSSI over SSH onto my hosted server (I'll just run a local
ircd) and she can use mIRC on her laptop instead. I have no intention of using
another hosted service. It would be more reliable as well - Live Messenger
reliability has always been crap.

(For ref, I do not use Skype, Facebook or any social tools).

~~~
briffle
Just as an FYI, you can setup your own XMPP server in 20 min, and chat with
people on facebook, gtalk, etc. www.prosody.im

~~~
thisisabore
Nope, not on Facebook you can't. Unless I'm sourly mistaken, the Facebook
Jabber server does not support s2s federation (by choice, obviously) and won't
let users outside the Facebook Jabber server chat to those on it.

Cue walled garden rant.

Wha you can do is use an existing Facebook (Jabber) account on a regular
Jabber client such as Pidgin, Adium and such.

No problem chatting with @gmail.com JIDs from any Jabber server though (well,
besides the fact that Google's Multi User Chat support is pretty shitty in my
experience, and that the two-way Jabber subscription process it bit weird in
Google land).

I absolutely second the Prosody advice though, wonderful server and very
friendly community and devs!

~~~
trout
Haven't tested, but this says the opposite:
[http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/10/facebook-chat-launches-
xmpp...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/10/facebook-chat-launches-xmpp-
support/)

~~~
pgeorgi
This only describes the feature of connecting an XMPP client to facebook chat.

S2S federation means server-to-server. That is, use your XMPP account on your
own server (such as prosody, as proposed above) to communicate with facebook
users (on facebook's servers).

But that would go against fb's walled garden approach, so it's unlikely to
come.

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jdp23
Back in 2006, MSN Messenger was one of the world's best-known brands (its logo
outscored Mickey Mouse!); in large parts of Asia and Europe it had become a
verb -- "I'll MSN you"; and had some clever approaches to ads that got
extremely high clickthroughs.

But then MS changed its name to 'Windows Live Messenger' to boost the Windows
Live brand; underinvested in development and support; and focused its
advertising on trying to compete with Google for search ads.

Ah well. The path not taken.

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marcf
Can they optimize Skype so that it doesn't require 80MB-130MB just to run in
the background? How can it require this much memory to run an instant
messenger? Couldn't they delay load some of the features if they aren't yet
being used (such as video codecs and audio codecs and other such features?)

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ido
I guess in a time where 4-8gb ram is the norm, 80-130mb memory consumption is
not seen as a priority.

~~~
pestaa
Yes it would be a great trade-off, but the window still takes seconds to
display.

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sinesha
Performance aside, here is what I hate about Skype compared to MSN / WLM:
privacy. (1) Skype logs you in to your last known status / on MSN you could
choose before login (for example, "appear offline"/"invisible"). If I just
want to check if a contact is online without my aunt start chatting, I can't.
(2) There is no easy way to block whole contact groups temporarily. When I'm
at work, I don't want my friends to see me online; when I'm at home, I don't
want to be contacted by co-workers. (3) Say I'm chatting with Bob, and he goes
offline just before I send him a last IM. This IM will be delivered the next
time that we are both online. Even if one of us is "appearing
offline"/"invisible". So we have a way of knowing when someone is hiding: just
send someone a message when they are offline. Bah. (4) Not related, but the
delivery of old messages is awful across platforms. What annoys me the most
about these bugs (1-3) is that they seem so easy to fix, and yet nothing is
done. Meh. Do you have similar frustrations?

~~~
petepete
(2) surely isn't a bug; if you have two subsets of contacts that you want to
keep entirely separate why use a single account?

~~~
lambda
Skype doesn't make it easy to use two accounts. There is no "multiple
accounts" feature where you can be logged in as one or both; instead, you have
to log out and log back in again as the other. Sometimes, you might be on-
call, so chatting with friends is OK, but you still need to be available to
coworkers.

The problem with Skype is that it's totally closed. I use a multi-protocol IM
client, with multiple accounts, so I can chat with people over AIM, FB, Google
Chat, my work chat, and so on. Sadly, despite the fact that my work has Google
Apps, which includes chat, they have standardized on Skype instead, so I need
to have an entirely separate client, and log out and log back in when
switching between work and personal accounts.

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mariusmg
They kill the client or the protocol ? It's not really clear from the article.
Don't care about the client itself (most IM clients suck anyway), that's why
we have pidgin.

~~~
belorn
I thought the protocol used a central server for transferring contact
information between users. If they shutdown those severs, then pidgin's msn
implementation wont do us any good.

~~~
mariusmg
Found some more info about this at [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/11/micros...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/11/microsoft-to-kill-off-the-messenger-client-and-regroup-
under-the-skype-brand/) .Apparently the won't kill the servers too so there's
still hope of continuing with pidgin.

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mileswu
I sign onto my various IM accounts from a variety of locations simultaneously
(e.g. desktop at home, laptop in office, phone) and I find it infuriating that
every protocol has a different way of handling that.

MSN: Sends incoming message _only_ to the last active computer (where last
active seems to be defined by which computer last sent an IM or updated your
status)

AIM: Sends incoming messages to all computers

XMPP (Gtalk): Inconsistent behaviour. I think the priorities set by various
clients screw things up.

Skype: Does weird chat/history syncing between all your computers (this raises
Privacy issues, as many times if I delete a chat on my desktop, it somehow
reappears on my phone when I sign in on it. Also although it syncs the chat
text, why not also sync whether the messages have been read or not, because at
the moment if I sign in on my phone, it constantly buzzes for about 5 minutes
as it 'catches' up on a ton of unread messages (which I've read ages ago on my
computer).)

What's worse is status fragmentation. I've set my desktop and laptop to auto-
away after 5 minutes, so people know if I'm there or if they can leave a
message I'll read later. Run through this situation: 1) Signed in on desktop,
go away. Pidgin sets Away on my accounts. 2) Some time later, turn on laptop.
Adium sets all my accounts as Online. 3) Turn off laptop to go somewhere.
Adium signs out and my accounts get left as Online. Desktop doesn't re-auto-
away and so people think I'm there when I'm not.

None of these are ideal, and the only 'solution' I've found is to use a
service like <http://imo.im> where their service only signs on _once_ to the
accounts, but you access imo.im on any number of devices so it can make sure
that every device has the same chat there. Problem with this is I don't like
using web apps and would prefer to use native Pidgin/Adium if possible.

Any suggestions?

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sp332
According to Ars Technica, the infrastructure will be the same.
[http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/11/micros...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/11/microsoft-to-kill-off-the-messenger-client-and-regroup-
under-the-skype-brand/) This is more of a rebrand than an "axe".

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hejsna
The best way to spend any extra money saved on retiring MSN: open up the Skype
API for devs to use. Adium is still the undisputed king of IM clients and with
a proper Skype plugin for it I'd be happy again. Because let's face it, the
Skype client is really, really bad.

~~~
DeepDuh
Goddamnit yes. Waiting years for this.

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dade_
Google needs to work hard and fast pushing google talk. This will determine
Google's place in the future of VoIP / video calling in the Internet.

~~~
gubatron
google talk was killed too. Now it's all G+

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navs
Did anyone notice how Skype now shows ads on the their iPhone app? Far as I'm
concerned it and live messenger have the same overall experience. I'd do away
with Skype if I weren't using it to keep in touch with clients.

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buro9
A truer description might be that the brand is being axed.

I believe that Skype has been migrated onto a messenger backend... so really
this is a unification of the chat tech onto messenger, and the brand onto
Skype.

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xutopia
Surely they know something we don't. I expected them to go the other way by
bringing Skype into Messenger.

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Achshar
Related: Can't seem to find Skype metro in windows store on release preview.
Any way of running it here?

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jpswade
This fixes the "Messenger" branding issue.

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belorn
Maybe this will help the uptake of xmpp.

~~~
garethadams
Windows Live Messenger _is_ XMPP - <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/live/hh826554.aspx>

~~~
pgeorgi
It's even worse than facebook's approach to XMPP (I didn't think that's
possible): Not only does it not provide server-to-server access, it also
requires client tokens for OAuth that must be requested out-of-band, so any
vanilla XMPP client can't make use of that endpoint.

