After 15 years, Microsoft’s MSN Messenger will retire for good on October 31.  MSN Messenger, (or Windows Live Messenger as it is currently known) began in 1999 as the big rival to AOL’s AIM service.  Rather intense battles occurred between the two for chat dominance, culminating in strategic moves such as Microsoft engineers reverse-engineering AOL’s chat protocol so MSN users could sign into AIM.  Needless to say, AOL was not happy with that, and the chat war waged on.  

As the years went on, MSN added different features, such as custom emoticons, a nudge feature which would shake a friends chat window (and annoy many people), the option to play Minesweeper with friends (very important), as well as the winks option of sending irritating, giant animated emoticons. But in this age of Facebook dominance and the ease of Skype, Microsoft’s Messenger has found that the used-to-be small pool of chat competition has opened up to many other competitors.  And alas, the MSN era is drawing to a close.  

Starting last year, Microsoft announced that it planned to shift users to Skype, but the service was still being run in China.  But on Halloween this year, MSN’s last stand in China will officially end.  It goes to show that today, simply being able to instantaneously chat (even with emoticons) isn’t enough.  To get a message across today, you can’t just simply send a message or nudge someone: you have to engage someone, with pictures, posts, updates, and variety. 

For those of us who might not have really experienced the MSN heyday, think of it like this: MSN was like someone using the exact same color and font as you during a chat conversation.  And if they wanted to annoy you, they sent you really BIG emoticons and shook your chat screen.  Also, apparently people put emoticons in their name and statuses.  And thought it was cool.  

With that in mind, I think it is safe to say that with so many options for social media and chats, the world will go on.  Sayonara, MSN Messenger.  

Source: TheVerge