Microsoft Axing Messenger On March 15th

An anonymous reader writes with news that Microsoft is killing Messenger in favor of Skype. From the article:"Microsoft on Tuesday mass emailed its 100 million+ Messenger users to let them know that the service is officially being retired on March 15, 2013. On that date, all users will be migrated to Skype, which Microsoft acquired back in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. This means Messenger will be shut down in just 66 days. It will only keep working afterwards in mainland China, mainly because Skype is operated there by a local provider called TOM."Relatedly, an anonymous reader asks:"I am looking to build a Skype replacement for me and some friends and was wondering which languages you would use server side to handle all of the encrypted data streaming? I am thinking to use SIP on a centralized server (as NAT can be a pain to get through). The clients will use end-to-end encryption. Thoughts?"There are some alternatives already, for variable definitions of working.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/01...-on-march-15th