At the end of October 2014, something very important came to an end. After 15 years of changing the way people communicated forever, Microsoft closed down its MSN Windows Live service. Originally named MSN Messenger, its demise was not an overnight failure. Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype for £5.1 billion in 2012 meant it was only a matter of time before it was finally closed. China was the last territory to migrate the service to Skype; other countries did so 12 months earlier. At its height, MSN Messenger had more than 330 million users after originally being launched to rival the emerging chat networks of AOL’s AIM service and ICQ, followed by the entry of Yahoo Messenger. It was the social network of its day and as influential and dominant as Facebook is today. Read 47 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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The fall… and rise and rise and rise of chat networks
