26 years ago, the most addictive platform of the early 2000s was born: what happened to MSN Messenger?
Whether you're approaching your thirties or you've only just passed them, there's probably a place in your heart for me to tell you about MSN Messenger , the most popular messaging platform of the early 2000s that took the world by storm, including in Spain.
MSN Messenger is etched in the memories of all of us who spent our teenage years in front of a computer screen chatting on this platform. Hours and hours of conversations, sending buzzes, and exchanging statuses , usually trying to get someone to take the hint.
This service was launched by Microsoft at midnight on July 22, 1999, which means it's been 25 years since it was born and you've aged a quarter of a century .
Essentially, MSN Messenger was a platform where users could chat in real time, send emojis, share files, and make video calls . It's kind of like combining WhatsApp, Instagram, and Teams in one place, but with a much more retro feel.
How did you connect to 'El Messenger'?It didn't take much to get started: just add someone's email address— probably @hotmail.com —and you could add them to your contacts list.
A system, by the way, that is somewhat more respectful of privacy than having to know a person's phone number to chat with them, as WhatsApp does up to now — although this could change soon with the username feature the platform is working on .
It's true that they also asked for a private piece of information—your email address—but many chose to create an account just for the Microsoft service and continued using their personal account for everything else.
But let's get back to MSN Messenger. This proto-social network quickly became an essential tool for online communication, something we all wanted to be part of, and you've probably had to fight with your mom or dad more than once to cut off your landline because you needed it for your internet connection .
Let's make another brief aside about another nostalgic element from that era: the modem. When the Internet arrived in Spain, there was obviously no broadband : connections were made through phone calls thanks to a modem, that device that beeped when connecting to the Internet. As you'll remember, or can imagine if you didn't experience it, it wasn't very fast—watching a video was an ordeal.
'The Messenger' marked a before and after in the way we relate to the world and prepared an entire generation for the digital age that was yet to come . It replaced long phone calls with your friends with a total addiction to talking without seeing or hearing each other, even if you'd just been with those people.
As I said, if we consider old favorites like MSN Messenger or MySpace, today's social networks haven't invented anything . A good example is that MSN Messenger already had a status bar from which you could display a personal message. You could even customize the font and include symbols. And everything was visible to other users.
The difference is that back then we were perhaps more naive and inexperienced, and you opened up with tremendous existential statements that you probably wouldn't say so publicly today. Or maybe that was just adolescence.
Another of its most distinctive features was the "status" button, a way to show at a glance whether you were available, busy, or offline . It was also often the perfect excuse for what we would call "leaving someone on seen" today . There was also a "snooper mode," as the platform allowed you to remain invisible so no one would bother you. Of course, you could also block contacts when you got angry with a friend or partner.
One of the most exciting moments was when someone came online and the platform notified you with a small notification that always made your heart skip a beat. I think this feature would be quite useful today, since services like WhatsApp don't let you log out or inform others when you're available or unavailable.
I can't forget the aforementioned buzzes , a nudge when you wanted someone to pay attention to you that caused the other person's chat window to vibrate for a few seconds. It's like sending twenty "oooo"s today, but it required less effort.
Nor what for many was the best function and an open letter about our emotional situation at the moment: being able to show the song you were listening to as a status , which normally also used to be a hint to your teenage love.
But above all, what MSN Messenger gave us was a certain intimacy : away from the living room landline, where you whispered into it so the rest of the family couldn't hear, we opened the door to an endless chat room with no time or space limits, where we could write whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, to whomever we wanted. And we wanted it all the time.
At the end of 2005, MSN Messenger was rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, perhaps in an attempt to appear more comprehensive. The numbers didn't look bad: in June 2009, it reached its peak with 330 million monthly users worldwide.
The problem with this program is that it failed to become the social network required by the changing times , marked by users different from the early internet users and by the emergence of smartphones . Thus, other players such as Facebook (2004) and WhatsApp (2009) emerged, but they ended up overtaking it.
As Mark Zuckerberg's social network became more lax in its access restrictions, Messenger's user losses grew. Seeing its plummeting decline, Microsoft decided to integrate the platform into Skype —founded in 2003 and acquired by the Redmond company in 2011—for the few who still used it, although it maintained its independent operation in China.
In October 2014, the once king of instant messaging services closed its doors forever . And we all forgot about the buzzing sounds, the statuses with songs dedicated to the love of our lives, the endless hours of conversations, and the sound of a new message coming in— that legendary "tinuní" that made us jump off the couch if we weren't already in front of the computer. Today, we always keep our phones on silent, and instead of chatting, we send each other photos that disappear in 24 hours.
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