Shoutbox

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Originally posted by The Blasphemer, msn messenger blog
MSN Messenger as a paid service?
March 31st, 2005 by TheBlasphemer

Today I got word of some microsoft employees that the company is not satisfied with the current profit-margin.
To make more profit, microsoft will be taking out a whole lot of functionality from Messenger, and only enable this on paid accounts.
Some of the features that are rumoured to disappear are the ability to choose your own display-picture, the ability to place people in seperate groups, filetransfer (although the free client will most likely be able to ACCEPT file-transfers), and last but not least animated emoticons in Messenger 7 will also be a paid-only feature.
As of now, I am not sure if it will be possible to bypass the paying, much like we did with bluemountain, but since this would be a lot of server-side, I fear that it will not, and the microsoft employees I have talked to stressed the fact that Microsoft is actually trying to secure MSN Messenger nowadays (anyone remember the test-phases?).
Patchou has also announced that if MSN Messenger would ever become paid, he will most certainly drop the Messenger Plus! project and try his luck on either Yahoo Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger, we think that those are the best available surrogates if microsoft will push it this far.

I currently do not have time to investigate more, since I will have to attend school in just a little while,
however when I get back I will try to get in touch with some other, higher placed, Microsoft employees for their view on the matter…

Bye,
TB

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i really hope this wont be the case, if this is true i wont be able to do anything since i hjave no buddys on other programs, i really hope they reconsider

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Originally posted by ~INVASION~

i really hope this wont be the case, if this is true i wont be able to do anything since i hjave no buddys on other programs, i really hope they reconsider

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as people have pointed out already (in the comments) , if it becomes paid, most people will move to something like AIM or Yahoo.

true but still msn messenger is better then all of them and i dont hink isd be able to part from it. But if it does and patchou moves to another then ill prolly follow him

To cut off something as basic as file transfers, and even display pictures, would be a plain bad move. People already know display pictures, they've had them for free for more than a year, if they suddenly end having them they will move them and their contacts to other system that doesn't make features paid randomly.

MS wants to make money from Messenger (completely understandable, of course, it's their product and they're free to do anything with it) -- but I see this as more of a rumor than anything remotely possible. Features like winks or animated display pictures and custom emoticons, yeah, but FILE TRANSFERS? Only time will tell, but (no offense TB) it seems just like a FUD article. Of course, I don't have the sources you may have so I could be wrong... but that's what it sounds about.

I just hope I'm right

And of course, if this was supposed to be an April Fools joke, they better fix that WordPress installation to display the correct date

quote:

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Originally posted by ~INVASION~
true but still msn messenger is better then all of them and i dont hink isd be able to part from it. But if it does and patchou moves to another then ill prolly follow him

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as will probably most of this forum lol

i definitely will unless there remains free programs like trillian that can also connect to msn, but if its a server side thing i doubt they will remain

There's one thing on my mind after I read the post that MSN would lose more money if they do that

And I probably follow Patchou, like ~INVASION~

Thats actually a scary thought...alot of people think it'll stay free...but i never thought it would stay free

Will Msn Stay Free

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Originally posted by Third Dimension
Thats actually a scary thought...alot of people think it'll stay free...but i never thought it would stay free

Will Msn Stay Free

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Errm... it's not under discussion that they will keep the basic service free. They will. It's about some features that *might* become part of a premium service.

Do you people even read things you comment on?

If MS do this, it will be the stupidest marketing move ever made, it'll be ok for a short while but what will happen is straightforward.

I'll move to whatever client most of my friends move to, which will most likely be AIM or Yahoo, I'm pretty sure everyone in my school would move to AIM, a few people will pay for MSN, but give up when there's virtually no one to talk to...MSN will die a slow death with the bulk of features missing. It's not like MSN have cornered the IM market, it's a free for all, and there's lots of free stuff out there...MSN is the big client used in my area, but it could easily change if a load of people get tired of the "You must pay for this feature" message.

It could be a april fool since TB lives in the GMT+1 timzone which now is under DST, and that means he is like 8 hours beyond the servertime. But i dont know...