MSN Messenger

Before social media became the center of online identity, millions of people had a different kind of social network. It was a list of names in a small window on their desktop. Microsoft launched MSN Messenger Service in July 1999. The basic idea was simple but enormously powerful. Messenger showed users which friends, relatives and coworkers were currently online and allowed them to begin a real-time conversation immediately. At launch, Microsoft emphasized its connection to the enormous MSN Hotmail user base. People could use their existing identities, add contacts and receive alerts when friends came online. Microsoft even initially designed MSN Messenger to communicate with AOL Instant Messenger users, setting off an early battle over interoperability between the competing instant-messaging networks. But Messenger quickly became much more than a utility for exchanging text. For an entire generation, it became a place to hang out. Users built contact lists containing classmates, friends, relatives, coworkers, romantic interests and people they had met elsewhere online. The status indicator beside each name carried enormous social significance. Online. Busy. Away. Offline. Seeing one particular person suddenly appear online could change the course of an entire evening. And then there was the notification. Messenger's alerts became part of the soundtrack of the early broadband internet. A conversation window could sit beside a web browser, Winamp, homework, a game or whatever else someone was doing on the family computer. Over time, Microsoft added increasingly elaborate ways for users to express themselves. Display pictures became miniature online identities. Custom emoticons invaded conversations. Users selected fonts and colors. Personal status messages became spaces for jokes, cryptic messages, song lyrics and declarations about relationships. Winks filled chat windows with animations. Nudges violently shook the recipient's conversation window when someone apparently wasn't responding quickly enough. Messenger also expanded beyond text. Users could transfer files, share photographs, communicate by voice and eventually conduct webcam conversations. These capabilities seem ordinary today. During Messenger's rise, they made the application feel like an increasingly complete communication environment. The product itself evolved as Microsoft's internet branding changed. MSN Messenger eventually became Windows Live Messenger as Microsoft reorganized many of its consumer internet services under the Windows Live name. But millions of users continued calling it simply "MSN." The old name had become bigger than Microsoft's branding department. By the late 2000s, Messenger had grown into one of the world's largest instant-messaging platforms. But the internet around it was changing rapidly. Facebook was transforming online social interaction. Mobile phones were becoming computers. SMS had become routine. New messaging applications were being designed around an assumption that users were connected everywhere rather than sitting in front of a Windows PC. The desktop instant-messaging era was beginning to end.

Windows Live Messenger was ultimately discontinued because Microsoft's communication strategy changed—and because Microsoft already owned the product it wanted to replace it with. Skype. Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011. That gave the company a globally recognized communication platform offering instant messaging alongside voice calls, video calls, group video conversations, screen sharing and communication with conventional telephone numbers. Maintaining both Skype and Windows Live Messenger increasingly made little strategic sense. At the same time, the market that had made Messenger enormously successful was disappearing. Messenger had been created for the desktop internet. Users sat down at a computer, launched Messenger, signed in and announced their presence to everyone on their contact list. When they left the computer, they went away or offline. Smartphones fundamentally changed that model. People were becoming permanently connected. Text messaging, Facebook, WhatsApp, Apple's messaging services and numerous mobile applications allowed conversations to continue throughout the day without users deliberately signing into a desktop instant-messaging application. Microsoft began preparing Messenger users for the transition to Skype in 2012. Skype 6.0 allowed people to sign in using their Microsoft accounts. Their existing Messenger contact lists could automatically appear inside Skype. That gave Microsoft a migration path rather than simply shutting Messenger down and abandoning its enormous user base. Microsoft subsequently announced that Messenger would be retired in most of the world in 2013. Users were encouraged to upgrade to Skype, where they could continue communicating with their existing Messenger contacts while gaining Skype's broader voice and video capabilities. The migration took place during the spring of 2013. Mainland China was an exception and continued operating Messenger longer because of the service's local arrangement there. For most of the world, however, 2013 marked the end. After nearly fourteen years, the familiar Messenger contact list disappeared. Microsoft had not abandoned instant communication. It had consolidated it into Skype.

Windows Live Messenger belongs to a period when being online was still a distinct state. People signed in. They went away. They came back. They signed out. And everyone on their contact list could see it happen. That distinction has largely disappeared from modern life. Smartphones keep people continuously connected, and messaging applications follow users everywhere. Messenger therefore represents more than a discontinued piece of Microsoft software. It represents a particular kind of internet social life. Screen names and email addresses functioned as identities. Display pictures were carefully selected. Personal messages were changed because one particular person might notice them. Someone could appear offline simply because they didn't want another person to know they were there. And few features captured the peculiar social dynamics of the era better than the nudge. If someone wasn't answering, Messenger allowed a user to shake the other person's conversation window. It was obnoxious. That was the point. Messenger also helped normalize technologies that eventually became unremarkable. Real-time text communication. Presence indicators. File sharing. Voice conversations through a computer. Webcam calls. Custom reactions and visual expressions. Persistent contact lists tied to online identities. Modern messaging platforms inherited these concepts and expanded them far beyond the desktop. Messenger became unnecessary partly because the behavior it helped popularize became universal. Today there is no need to sit down at a computer and announce that you are online. You're effectively always online. That makes Windows Live Messenger intensely nostalgic for people who grew up with it. The application disappeared. The way it taught people to communicate did not.