GingerNinja.net

So, Microsoft have lauched a new version of MSN Messenger. Why is this newsworthy? I hear you ask. Well, looking at the new list of features for this version, it looks like Microsoft have really closed the gap between their Messenger and my other main IM tool Yahoo! Messenger. The only difference that I can now readily see between the two products is that of chat rooms.

Microsoft closed their un-moderated chat rooms back in October 2003 in Europe, Middle East, Latin America and most of Asia due to the high number of children using the rooms and potentially being “groomed” by adults with not very nice intentions (to put it politely). Microsoft did come under fire as many thought that their noble intentions were actually masking the fact that Microsoft could save quite a bit of cash by closing the free rooms and moving the subscription based services in the US.
Yahoo still have a huge amount of chat rooms on offer. All of them are free and many of them user created i.e. individuals create the rooms and they remain open for as long as the individual remains online. Most of the rooms that are user created, however, are adult in nature with many of them populated by “bots” which sit there advertising adult web sites and services based in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

With many businesses using either Microsoft’s MSN/Windows Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) it will be interesting to see how much of the home market IM share Microsoft can claw back with these changes.

Linkage: I use the fantastic Messenger Plus add-in for MSN which allows to disable many of the annoying features of MSNM and make it more user friendly - try it, you’ll like it.

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