[venning]

Playing devil's advocate: WhatsApp is a $22B investment. It makes sense to try to prevent it from being canabalized from the inside.

We've seen something like this before, when AIM allowed MSN Messenger to interoperate. I know this is a little different, but that was still how AIM lost.

Here is a fantastic war story from one of the MSN engineers on the battle to subvert AIM [1].

[1] https://nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/

[roymurdock]

From my experience, AIM lost because it was the cool thing to do in high school before everyone had cell phones. Once texting/BBM was a thing, AIM became completely obsolete. I don't think I know anyone who ever used MSN Messenger.

[izacus]

MSN Messenger was one of those "regional" services simillar to WhatsApp - it was very popular in Europe, pretty much everyone used it around here, while as far as I heard it was very rare in US.

[rchaud]

It was very popular all across Asia too, except maybe China where Internet restrictions probably led to local competitors,sprouting up. It likely wasn't popular in the US as AOL captured the market first, and the impact of network effects is huge when it comes to chat apps.

Interestingly, MSN Messenger's capabilities in the late 90s/early 2000s were quite impressive. I remember being able to make long-distance audio VOIP calls using Messenger back in 2000, even on an awful 33.6kbps modem. The feature was removed pretty soon after, probably because it was abused (there was no charge for calls).

You could also send decently sized files (~10MB) using Messenger until about 2005, and that too was discontinued as people used it to send MP3s to one another.

[giancarlostoro]

Odd you say that, everyone I ever met here in the US and even in Puerto Rico had MSN. Probably because it came with a free email, and was maintained by Microsoft.

[chetanahuja]

"regional" services simillar to WhatsApp

The app with a billion plus installs, quite likely the largest actively used chat app in the world is a "regional" service. Just to take a wild guess, you're not an iOS user from the bay area by any chance? I haven't come across too many Android users who are not using WhatsApp in the US.

[vmarsy]

I think the parent put regional in double quotes for a reason, he/she just meant to say that it was more popular in certain part of the world than other and it's 100% right: It used to have 100 million users and was #1 in 11 countries[1]. Back in 2003 this is quite impressive!

Bashing on 'iOS users from the bay area' makes no sense, the parent also implies in his post that he is from Europe.

And as a non-iOS user, not from the bay area, I have rarely see people using WhatsApp, neither in Europe, nor in the US. The only few people I've seen using it is foreigners who want to stay in contact with relatives/friends in an country where WhatsApp is popular.

[1]http://news.microsoft.com/2003/05/12/100-million-customers-a...

[fluxquanta]

>I don't think I know anyone who ever used MSN Messenger

I did because it had the best quality video chat at the time, before Skype became a thing, but that was probably 15 years ago. My current company used to use it for in-office communication as recently as five years ago when I was first hired. It was an abysmal mess of sending out group chats as individual windows every time someone had a question. For a software company it was really disgraceful.

[ParadoxOryx]

My company used Yahoo! Messenger for the longest time. Thank goodness for HipChat/Slack.

[giancarlostoro]

But MSN had group conversations (as far as I remember), why not simply use those?

[fluxquanta]

Our office was about 20 people at the time. Any time anyone had a question, but didn't know who to direct it to, a new group conversation was initiated with everyone in the office. That was the problem.

[joepie91_]

In the Netherlands, there was almost nobody who didn't use MSN Messenger.

[HappyTypist]

Preventing interoperatibility is one thing. Rewriting user messages without their consent is another.

[amyjess]

> We've seen something like this before, when AIM allowed MSN Messenger to interoperate. I know this is a little different, but that was still how AIM lost.

Lost? AIM was the dominant IM platform in the US until the late 00s/early 10s when mobile and cloud-based services took over. First SMS/MMS and then platforms like Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, and Skype.

The only place MSN was dominant was third-world countries like Brazil.

[MAGZine]

MSN was way more popular than AIM in parts of Canada (maybe all, I can't speak nationally).

Probably, AIM usage correlated with AOL's marketing strategy, meaning it prevailed in the US, though I'm not even sure about europe.

Anyhow, your assertion that MSN was only dominant in 3rd world countries is unfounded.

[realusername]

Don't know about other countries, on my case in France, it was MSN-only, I've never seen anyone with a AIM account ever. I had no idea it used to be popular in the US, I've actually learned that now.

[scottmcf]

I'd say MSN had the edge over AIM in Scotland too, although the populations overlapped heavily (i.e. most people I talked with had both).

[Laaw]

SMS/MMS lost? Tell that to my friends/family/telcos.

[amyjess]

No, I said that AIM was first overtaken by SMS/MMS and then by Facebook/Google/Skype. I didn't say that SMS/MMS died out, just that it was joined by the others.

[venning]

Fair point. I got a little word-happy.