6 ms·
aMSN had this feature because the MSN protocol would establish a connection as soon as a you opened a chat window (before you started typing!) in order to be ab
by jeromegv 4y ago
aMSN had this feature because the MSN protocol would establish a connection as soon as a you opened a chat window (before you started typing!) in order to be able to retrieve the display picture from the other user. So you would be able to know that someone opened a chat window but decided against starting to type (or haven't decided quite yet they would want to type).
This is documented in this old FAQ
https://github.com/Kjir/amsn/blob/master/amsn/FAQ https://github.com/Kjir/amsn/blob/master/amsn/FAQ
(Former aMSN developer)
I admit now this is creepy.
- shultays 4y agoHuh, was msn fetching the profile picture from other perso (p2p?), and not from msn servers?
- GekkePrutser 4y agoIt was early days for IM and I guess storage was expensive. Early ICQ didn't even store the contact list on the server so you had different contacts on every PC.