this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024

215 points (92.5% liked)

Technology

63009 readers

2410 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

215

What Ever Happened to MSN Messenger? (www.techspot.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

119 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The bottom of the article links to the history (individual features) of other IM programs from that era as well like ICQ and Yahoo Messenger.

(page 3) 23 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 51 points 4 months ago (5 children)

I'm surprised no one mentioned Facebook.

I recall using MSN as far as in to 2009, but the friends I was connected with migrated to Facebook when their chat feature rolled out.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

The article touches on that

The advent of social media and mobile devices couldn't be ignored either. These technologies were enabling new ways for people to stay in touch with friends and family that didn't involve a traditional computer.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I remember I started using more Skype after it MSN Messenger.

But I'd say it got killed by WhatsApp on mobile phones.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

No mentions of XMPP 😒

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 months ago (12 children)

Anyone remember the short-lived Great War of the Messenger Apps? For a few months back around... '98? '99? MSN tried really hard to shoehorn its way into working with AIM. About every day there would be an update from MSM Messenger to allow it to work with AIM. Then AOL would fuck with their own protocol to ice out MSN users again.

I think these shenanigans also impacted the Trillium Messenger app too, which up until then had been flying under the radar of messenger interoperability.

I might be getting some of these details wrong.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

And then Jabber came to fix it by introducing an open protocol, and Google started supporting it, and all was well. But when everybody was using Google Chat they severed the Jabber compatibility, locking everyone in to their platform. Now we're back wading around in enshittified shit and Jabber is dead.

load more comments (6 replies)

load more comments (11 replies)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (7 children)

I never knew anybody who used it. I had one contact on ICQ. Everybody else used AIM.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Remember when icq could message aim users though? That was so badass.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (3 children)

remember trillian? or pidgin was it called? you could message every service.

that was badass.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Pidgin still seems to active lol

https://keep.imfreedom.org/pidgin/

Wonder who still uses it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Both. Trillian was not Mac only (I made a mistake from memory), Pidgin was multi platform but started on Linux. Pidgin had every protocol. I still keep my .purple config folder and logs after over a decade. Not like I'll ever read the logs again, though.

Edit: Guys, relax. I made a mistake recounting from memory. I didn't run Windows back then. I assumed that because of the native Aqua interface, there wasn't a Windows port.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I remember having Trillian on Windows way back when.

I'll have you know I did go back and read my logs from like 2008. I think I cringed so hard I never recovered. You might have saved yourself by not looking at yours!

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I was in highschool in the 2000s in Europe, and msn was our default way of communication with classmates.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yep, early 2000s in the UK and everyone was using MSN. I didn’t know a single person using AIM or ICQ!

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Ditto for us in Australia

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft happened.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

MSN = Microsoft Network. They didn't "happen"...they were always part of the process. MSN messenger was never anything other than a Microsoft product.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (3 children)

well, the same as the others really: Time.

I think once SMS and phone apps became the norm over having Messenger apps on our Desktops all the time, that was pretty much it for these applications over all. It was a long, slow death. But MSN was one of the firsts to call it quits if I recall right. Oddly the IM app I liked the most. It's just not many of my friends used it. They were all AIM/AOL users.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I miss Adium, I used it for a bunch of protocols, and I customized the CSS/html to make it look really awesome.

I had an app called snakeskin or something to skin my Mac OS X to be dark themed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Wow, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The one thing these messengers had over texts was presence notifications. I remember jumping through hoops to get aim working on my Motorola v188 so that I could be notified every time my crush came online and I could send her a “hey what’s going on”… only for it to be ignored.