MSN had one of the coolest things going for them and that was the MSN Groups. The format was fun to use, clutter free, easy on the eyes and was unique in the world of internet groups. It offered a wide variety of topics to choose from and gave the owners of the groups the opportunity to be really creative with their sites. But now the plug is being pulled. Another great idea being tossed into the dumpster. MSN says the volume of people using the groups has steadily gone down. What they don't tell you is that they made it virtually impossible to find the groups if you've never been there before.
For the last few years they have slowly drained the groups by taking away it's easy access from the main page and not allowing groups to invite new members. They've also taken away the groups chat rooms which was given to them after MSN started charging people to go to the main chat rooms. A huge fumble on their part and that just seemed to be a on going pattern with MSN. Create something cool, fuck with it then destroy it.
There are so many questions as to why MSN would do something to like that and lose many of it's loyal members. One rumor I've heard said that they wanted to migrate to Windows Live and that the operating system was incompatible with the old MSN Groups. I've talked with a few members of the MSN Groups who said they've tried Windows Live Beta version last year and said it wasn't anything special. It's format was like that of Facebook, MySpace and other personal blog sites and since they had the choice to move back they did.
It's curious that a company would abandon something so unique like MSN Group format for a dime a dozen format like Facebook or MySpace. It's safe to say that when MySpace came out it was a hit. It's popularity has taken over the net turned fun groups into personal blogs and vanity pages. No longer are there fifty different topics to chose from. Now you are limited to small a few small postings at a time and the creativity of the poster is reduced to just text.
For the life of me I'll never understand this need to conform. MSN had a good community going and if they'd have let them continued it would have thrived. It makes sense for teens and young adults to go to a MySpace type pages because the youth are narcissistic in nature and never pass up a chance to self promote. MSN could have had that site for them and left the others alone.
I guess it doesn't matter anymore for the deed is done and it's time to move on. One thing I'm taking away from this is that I'm finished with Microsoft.
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