In memoriam
MSN Messenger
Born 1999. Died 15 March 2013.
MSN Messenger passed on 15 March 2013, having lived fourteen years as the primary means by which millions learned to chat. Born in 1999, it offered a Buddy List and the sound of a door opening. It was rebranded as Windows Live Messenger. At its peak it claimed more than one hundred million active users. Microsoft acquired Skype. In November 2012 the company announced the transition. Messenger would be retired. Users would move to Skype. The migration was mandatory. On 15 March 2013 the servers went quiet everywhere except China, where the service lingered another year. He is survived by every chat window that replaced him, and by the memory of a time when messaging was a place you went, not a thing you did.
We are retiring Windows Live Messenger and transitioning users to Skype.
Replaced by inferior successor
Mourned by Those who chatted across continents for free, teenagers who learned to type in nudge, and anyone who remembers the sound of a message arriving.
Skype, which absorbed its users; the emoticon, which outlived the colon-paren; and the memory of one hundred million people who learned that typing could feel like talking.