![]() I suspect nobody will feel the same nostalgia for Skype that many of us do for MSN Messenger, and likely will for current apps like Discord. But Skype itself has fallen out of the spotlight as a consumer option for messaging, owing to its lack of privacy features and sluggish apps. Sure, Skype now powers the back end experiences for various services, like Microsoft Teams and Xbox Live, both of which are very popular. There's a whole other discussion to be made about whether Skype was a worthwhile purchase for Microsoft, given that they already had a huge messaging service of its own. It's kind of wild to think that, at its peak, MSN boasted 300 million monthly active users, which is apparently similar to what Skype is currently serving today. According to the site, it even has a few hundred users active right now, and is also how I managed to grab some screenshots for this article. MSN and Windows Live Messenger do live on as a project by the Escargot team, providing custom chat servers and a modded version of the classic client. I suspect things are quite different for kids in 2021. But that's what the world feels like when you're a teenager. Given all the danger that lurks online nowadays, it's hard to imagine how carefree we were about the whole thing back then. whose only goal is to harvest money from advertisers. There were no echo chambers crammed with false information being broadcast algorithmically by an unfeeling A.I. You didn't ask for people's phone numbers, you asked for their "MSN." There were no algorithmic feeds shaping the content you saw. People didn't really have personal cell phones back then, and there was less of an emphasis on privacy and encryption like there is today. Perhaps Microsoft just wasn't evil enough to make the same leaps that led us to the hellscape that is modern social media. Your "likes" on MSN's profiles weren't used to target you with ads, and were simply a list of things you actually enjoyed. MSN was supported by ads, but they weren't the laser-targeted data-harvesting type ads we get today. The only missing link was an active feed of updates, and I suppose monetization. Some people went to great lengths to detail these out. ![]() These profiles were effectively like Facebook's own pages, where you could list your interests, some pictures of yourself, among other stuff. MSN Messenger even had the rudimentary features of a Facebook-style web-based social media platform, called MSN Profiles. Later versions of MSN came baked with MSN Game Zone in it, letting you play games directly within the chat window. You could add custom emojis, similar to Discord, complete with custom shortcuts. You could add animated emojis to your screen name. Microsoft added the ability to turn this off, thankfully. ![]() One of the most notorious features was the "Nudge," which was sort of like a super notification, that caused the chat window to very annoyingly vibrate. ![]() Windows Live Messenger even had a drawing tool, for sending doodles to your friends right from the chatbox. You could set your own fonts, which is something most messaging services don't offer now. I recall everyone being mad every time they changed the layout, similar to how people freak out whenever Facebook changes its layout nowadays. Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central) ![]()
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