Microsoft Retires Live Messenger And Moves To Skype

Yeah, this is real, and it'll happen in the first quarter of 2013. China is excluded from this and will still have the regular messenger. You can upgrade it as we speak, just download newest Skype here: Skype (en-us) and you can login with your Windows Live account.

Microsoft bought Skype for 8.5 Billion in May of 2011 and they are now planning to move their well known chatting enviornment into that investment.



At the moment, Skype doesn't have the features that Messenger has, but they'll be importing them soon ( picture sharing, etc. ).

By logging in with your Live account, all the contacts will be imported, so you don't have to worry about that. Everyone will be still able to talk to you, you just can't share pictures atm with the people that are logged in with Skype.

For me personally, this idea of using Skype instead of Live Messenger is a bit uncomfortable, because i've never actually used Skype in my life and it takes time to get used to it.

Read more in Skype official blog.