Lee Suckling: We'll miss you, MSN Messenger

Photo / Thinkstock

Last week, Microsoft announced it was officially closing down MSN Messenger next month. The English-speaking world was pushed over to Skype (which Microsoft now owns) last year, though Chinese users have been allowed continued access to Messenger. On 31 October, the entire service will cease to exist.

I've had a wave of nostalgia preparing to write this article. MSN Messenger remains the most influential socio-technological innovation for Generation Y. Yes, more than Facebook, Twitter, and everything else that has come to our screens in the last 15 years.

It was the year 2000 when my family first got its dial-up connected home computer. This was later than many families, and it was only upon the urging by myself and my brothers that our parents succumbed to such a purchase.

I quickly discovered MSN Messenger after hearing about it in school corridors. I chose my username, and expected it to be something like e-mail, which I'd been introduced to in third form. Lo, and behold! MSN was something else. It was real-time instant messaging (quickly coined IM-ing). It was acronyms and emoticons. It was the beginning of my text-based world, arriving two years before I was allowed my first mobile phone.

For a good part of the 2000s, MSN Messenger was every teenager's social life. We'd race home from school every day and jump straight on the computer at 3pm, eager to instant message our friends about everything that'd happened that day. Importantly, no longer did we have to awkwardly phone the girls or boys we liked with the immortal fear their fathers would answer our calls; we could type away with them all night long, and parentals were none the wiser. MSN was a communal hub for friendship and teenage love that had no curfews, save for the fact it tied up the family landline with an incessant busy signal.

MSN Messenger allowed us to share our teenage thoughts with far less fear than we had in real life. It was a gauge for understanding who liked us, and who didn't; made obvious by the anxiety that came with waiting for someone to come online, and to see their first response (sometimes it took minutes!) after an initial "Hey". Let us not even get started on the tense feelings that came after receiving a "BRB" (be right back) from someone with whom you thought you were having an intense connection.

We could also talk to people we'd never met. Friends of friends, people from chatrooms; this was back when we weren't scared of cyber bullying and were happy to open a conversation with "ASL?" (Age, sex, location?). Entire relationships could be facilitated via MSN, from initial meet-cute to eventual breakup over that final, teary IM.

We couldn't yet type out our emotional status à la Facebook, but we could let everyone know how we were feeling with a smiley (or not so smiley) emoji face. We could group our contacts so we'd appear online to some, and offline to others. This was very important when trying to avoid the over-eager instant messengers who wouldn't leave us alone.

We could eventually have voice conversations, though the lagging speeds of 56k connections often meant it wasn't worth it. In 2003, MSN got personal: we could change our theme colours, use personalised avatars, and use our own photos as backgrounds. It finally felt like the service was ours.

Years went by and MSN was still there, changing only slightly as internet speeds improved and the World Wide Web opened up with newer technologies. Facebook became popular around 2007, though it wasn't until it launched its own internal messaging service that we all started to migrate our chats. By the time broadband had proliferated, we were all on Skype, and the concept of IM-ing was relegated to mobile-based services. We had no need to be tied to a desktop anymore.

MSN Messenger, later renamed Windows Messenger, endured a slow and drawn-out death. Next month, it is finally laid to rest.

As you read this, I am in Cupertino, California, where I've just been privy to the launch of the Apple Watch, alongside the two latest incarnations of the iPhone. As I strap a test Watch on my wrist and send instant smiley-faced emojis to other wearers, I realise how far we've come in one-to-one communication. Importantly, I'm now appreciating where instantaneous internet communication really all began for me.

MSN Messenger, it's only now you're gone that we remember how much you gave us. You were there before Apple Watch emojis, before Facebook statuses, before Snapchat, and before Instagram. You'll be sorely missed by an entire generation.