Microsoft announced back in October 2008 that it was killing off MSN Groups, and the day is almost here. Initially planned for February 21, 2009, the death of MSN Groups has been postponed, but the reprieve will be short lived at best. Come February 23, 2009 Microsoft will close down MSN Groups for good. The Redmond company justified its decision to add a few extra days of life to MSN Groups in an effort to allow one last chance to members to migrate their content or lose it completely.

“We want to mention it one more time, to make sure you migrate your groups to Multiply or save data from those groups locally before the service closes. We originally planned to close MSN Groups on February 21, but have extended this to February 23, so you still have the weekend to prepare,” revealed Charlotte Jones, group product manager. “If you are an MSN Groups user, you’ll need to move your group to the Multiply service before Monday, February 23, 2009. On February 23 we will close MSN Groups and you will no longer be able to access your group or any of the data in it.”

Microsoft explained that it was shutting down MSN Groups because the service has failed, over the past years, to rise to a quality standard that would justify keeping it alive, according to indications coming from end users and the company's own research. At the same time, the Redmond company invested in Windows Live Groups, and it makes absolutely no sense for the two overlapping services to co-exist from a resource distribution point of view. Users are urged to migrate their content to Multiply, a service with a set of features very similar to MSN Groups. Migration to Windows Live Groups is not possible.

“Windows Live Groups was built on a new platform with a different mix of features from MSN Groups. The features in Windows Live Groups are optimized for smaller groups of up to 20 people, like clubs or families, whereas MSN Groups caters to a wide variety of group sizes and types, including large public groups. Because the two services differ in their intent and features, they were built using different technologies, and a direct migration from MSN Groups to Windows Live Groups wasn’t possible,” Jones added.

Windows Live Groups debuted in December 2008, but the service has almost nothing in common with MSN Groups. Jones explained that the software giant's new Groups service was built on a new platform, and had a different collection of features, both incompatible with what MSN had to offer.

“Groups on Windows Live with fewer than 20 members can enjoy group chats using Windows Live Messenger. If your group has between 20 and 1000 members, you won’t be able to use group chat, but you can still create a group, and can take advantage of the group website, calendar, discussions, and other features of Windows Live Groups,” Jones explained.