From a user point of view Microsoft butchered Messenger a long time ago. That's why Facebook killed it very easily. First the official client (which I never st

From a user point of view Microsoft butchered Messenger a long time ago. That's why Facebook killed it very easily. First the official client (which I never stoud btw) became shittier with each release. Then they made that (very very) bad Facebook copy and forced users to display their real name instead of nicknames. Moreover Messenger suffers from protocol version fragmentation. Features in alternative clients are random. Some people see nicknames, others real names, some are unaware that their real name is displayed. Sometimes you get old avatars, sometimes new ones, sometimes you don't even know that your avatar does not work. Same for offline messaging, and multi-connection. And sadly Pidgin MSN's implementation SUCKS and it was a bad day when their survey indicated that people wanted up-to-date support and they just dismissed it.