I have to admit. I used this product for awhile before blogs became big to keep in touch with my family and friends when I traveled, but all things must come to a end

Besides this reminder the team also answers some of the most frequent questions they received about this.

Why are you closing MSN Groups ?

It is our goal to always provide the most current and user-friendly technology to our users, and over the past few years our research and user feedback indicate that MSN Groups fell short of that goal. At the same time, we have been making huge investments in the Windows Live suite of services. In the long term, closing MSN Groups helps us move users to new group experiences that over time will give them more ways to stay in touch with the people they care about. In December we released a brand new service for groups on Windows Live, building it from the ground up to provide great value for our customers.

Since the new Windows Live Groups service was built on a new platform with a different mix of features, we weren’t able to retrofit it to use the data contained in MSN Groups. However, it is very important to us that you can keep the data you’ve created using MSN Groups and can continue to enjoy those experiences. So we have partnered with Multiply to provide you with a way to transfer all of your MSN Groups data and keep your groups going into the future on Multiply.

Why Multiply?

Multiply is an online group and media sharing service that PCWorld recently called one of the ten most underrated tech products. Multiply has worked diligently with us to understand all the ways our customers use MSN Groups, and has prepared its service to receive and host MSN Groups and their data. Multiply prepared a special opt-in migration method that puts group managers in control of moving a group to Multiply and inviting members to rejoin the group in its new location.

Why not allow current MSN Groups to migrate to Windows Live Groups?

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. Multiply offers a similar set of features to MSN Groups and therefore can more effectively receive all of the MSN Groups data at this time.

You can read the full post here.