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.
Microsoft pivoted to Skype. Saved you a click and reading about 1000 words.
Yep. I hate clickbait. You’re a legend
Which Microsoft then shit all over (to be fair, Skype started that process even before MS bought them) and eventually renamed it to Microsoft Teams.
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.
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.
another reason to hate facebook
Same, it was pretty much an instant change too. Which sucked as Facebook chat was very unreliable at the time and obviously not very feature rich.
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.
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.
I used that until they pay walled it. Then I found Pidgen I believe it was called. It was open source and could connect to pretty much every messenger and IRC and stuff. Then my friend just switched to texting lol
Pidgin. Before that it was called Gaim.
It still works, as there are plugins to integrate it with almost everything.I knew it wasn’t spelled exactly like the bird lol. But yeah I used that shit for years. I don’t really have a use for it anymore or I’d probably still be using it
Gaim was the way I used MSN from Linux back in the day.
I miss that era.
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.
Support matrix!! It already has international support, just needs to be a bit better with stickers and qol stuff. I’ve been using it for years. It’s nice to know I don’t have to worry about my privacy at all with chat rooms that can continue on without the original server.
It was promoted to me as a contender for Slack / IRC, not for the kind of direct messaging app that ICQ / MSN messenger was.
I wouldn’t say jabber is dead, xmpp is still pretty well used. Not enough IMO, but still in use and with readily available modern servers. Jitsi is xmpp+jingle (sip signalling) after all.
Have you tried Matrix?
Trillian was definitely part of that war. I remember the daily patches to get things working again.
I think the article mentions it. AOL tried to block it and this to and fro went 21 times before finally coming to a stop. MSN and Yahoo later signed a deal, I think, so that the former will work with latter’s contacts properly.
It was very popular within my friends up until the skype merger. At that point they went “i aint usin skype lmao”
Good old days.
I never knew anybody who used it. I had one contact on ICQ. Everybody else used AIM.
In the UK MSN was pretty ubiquitous.
I think this is another one of those cases where the US does something different to the rest of the world: the majority of people were using msn messenger but the US was using aim.
I was in highschool in the 2000s in Europe, and msn was our default way of communication with classmates.
Yep, early 2000s in the UK and everyone was using MSN. I didn’t know a single person using AIM or ICQ!
Ditto for us in Australia
Remember when icq could message aim users though? That was so badass.
remember trillian? or pidgin was it called? you could message every service.
that was badass.
I actually forgot all about that, but yes I did use Trillian at one point. Can you imagine big tech companies letting you use third party apps that didn’t lock you into their service or ad stream these days?
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.
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!
Trillian was not Mac only. I’ve never owned a Mac and used Trillian almost exclusively from 2002 until roughly 2009?? I can’t remember when the transition from IM to texting happened for me, but it was around then. When I was running Linux at home I would use Gaim, which was developed by a friend of the main Trillian guy.
Trillian ran on Windows but was closed source. Pidgin is foss.
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.
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.
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.
Those were the days. 🥲
It was awesome. Especially paired with the msn messenger plus mod.
Near the end of its time and also when WiFi was taking off, I had friends with everyone in a uni house, but their WiFi was quite unreliable, so every hour or so I’d get 6 “person is online” pop up toasts appear simultaneously, stacked up on top of each other.
Nudge
Wizz
Oh what a relief it is
No mentions of XMPP 😒
I remember I started using more Skype after it MSN Messenger.
But I’d say it got killed by WhatsApp on mobile phones.
Microsoft happened.
MSN = Microsoft Network. They didn’t “happen”…they were always part of the process. MSN messenger was never anything other than a Microsoft product.
The reason MSN stopped being used was because Microsoft started requiring Microsoft accounts for it to work, and started pushing people towards Skype. Which is why “Microsoft happened”. I never really meant to imply that Microsoft bought it or anything, just that they are the reason it eventually died.
