Finally, Microsoft's extremely popular and one of the most successful services Windows Live Messenger service that carries the Windows Live branding, is going to be shut down in just a one month's time. It has been 15 wonderful years of service by MSN Messenger (That's what it was originally known as). Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, or Windows Live Messenger, is fully retiring on October 31st, 2014.
Microsoft originally announced its plans to shift users over to Skype in 2013 in a phased manner and kept the service running in China. Now, after this announcement, even Chinese Messenger users will need to use Skype after October 31st, which will bring an end to 15 years of the service. In China, MSN was launched in 2005 which got strong competition from local QQ Messenger of China.
MSN Messenger was the original name used for the service, and the first client was launched on July 22, 1999 as a rival to AOL’s AIM service.
Both companies battled over chat dominance, and Microsoft engineers
reverse-engineered AOL's chat protocol to allow MSN Messenger to sign
into AIM, a process that AOL wasn't happy with when Microsoft first
released its instant messaging client. This was the messenger that taught people how to chat over internet, but in August 2003, Skype was launched with advance features, like video chatting. In 2009, there were total of 33crore users on MSN Messenge but within next three years Skype rendezvous MSN reaching upto 30Crore users.
It was 15 years long journey ... end of the Messenger era is departing quietly !!
Microsoft originally announced its plans to shift users over to Skype in 2013 in a phased manner and kept the service running in China. Now, after this announcement, even Chinese Messenger users will need to use Skype after October 31st, which will bring an end to 15 years of the service. In China, MSN was launched in 2005 which got strong competition from local QQ Messenger of China.
History of WLM [MSN Messenger]
Facts about MSN Mssenger
- It was integrated well with Internet Explorer 5 and Outlook Express 5. Even
it appeared in Windows 8 as well, with the Messaging app
being Microsoft's embedded application that allows instant messaging using the
Live Messenger service.
- WLM (Windows Live Messenger) branding was incorporated in December of 2005, removing the MSN (originally MicroSoft Network) name after six years of its launch.
- Microsoft added various features, including custom emoticons, the ability to play Minesweeper with friends, a nudge feature that would shake a friends chat window, and the super annoying winks option to send friends giant animated emoticons.
- During its high time, people come back to log-in to Windows Live Messenger 3 times a day, or nearly 1,100 times a year, on an average.
- The average Messenger chat session is 5 minutes long.
- 320 kB was the original file size of the client according to Microsoft's launch press release. Nowadays the application consumes around 25 MB.
- In late 1999, rotating advertising banners were introduced in MSN Messenger 2.0. Initial version i.e. MSN Messenger 1.0 contained no ads in it. Latest versions of the WLM contain a lot of ads, most of which can be removed by 3rd party patching applications such as A-Patch.
- WLM has active monthly users equal to combined population of USA & Canada.
- www.msn.com is still the 16th most visited website according to Alexa.
- 2.8 billion minutes of Facebook chat occurred through Windows Live Messenger just six months after Facebook chat was included in Windows Live Messenger.
- Microsoft bought Skpye on may 10, 2011 for $8.5 billion, which proved biggest dent in MSN Services.
- WLM's market share 40.67% was in 2011, made it the most used IM service worldwide, whereas Skype came in second with 27.39%.
- 9 billion messages were sent per day across 1.5 billion conversations in early 2010, and this was before the inclusion of Facebook chat in the client.
- As per Microsoft statistics in 2010, 300 million people use Windows Live Messenger.
- More than 8 billion instant messages are exchanged every day. If you stacked them up as paper, they'd reach to the moon and back.
- Microsoft celebrated its MSN Messenger milestones with big green mascot outfits.
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| Nudge [Shaking] Feature of MSN Messenger |
It was 15 years long journey ... end of the Messenger era is departing quietly !!
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