Well not entirely. Group Program Manager for social networking within Windows Live, Jeff Kunin has provided "a short history" of Windows Live Messenger, which reveals many interesting facts and statistics. The post title is misleading, but once you extrapolate its content there are some great finds. This post intends to sum these up!

The article draws parrells with the rise of social networking and the popularity of IM. I have argued that IM has gone into decline since the rise of social networking websites as they act as a substitute products. However, the statistics available appear to falsify this statement. IM is on the rise, and social networking seems to be a compliment. Kunin argues that the advancement of new technologies helps their former, citing the example of now IM helped e-mail. It is an interesting idea.

• 4% of people who use Facebook in a given month also use Hotmail or Messenger in that same month, and vice versa 66% of monthly Messenger users also use Facebook, according to Comscore
• More than 300 million people in 76 countries and 48 languages use Messenger every month
• Messenger users now represent:
  • 65% of all Internet users in Brazil
  • 48% of all Internet users in Canada
  • 48% of all Internet users in Spain
  • 47% of all Internet users in France
  • 40% of all Internet users in Italy
  • 39% of all Internet users in UK
• People use Messenger for 163 billion minutes every month, which is about 9.4% of all time consumers spend on the Internet worldwide
• More than 40% of our users sign in each day (more than 130 million daily users)
• Every day, those users share over 1.5 billion conversations and send more than 9 billion messages
• And at peak times, that drives more than 40 million "simultaneous online connections," (the number of people signed in at the same time)
• Messenger users share over 1 billion status updates every month
• Those users often click through from the Messenger client to the Web, helping drive more than 300 million users to Windows Live Profile, Home, and SkyDrive every month

Source: Inside Windows Live blog - Windows Live Messenger – a short history