4 ms·

Those early clients barely had 30 million users and their daily actives were probably on the order of 20% of that. Whatsapp and Facebook messenger are approachi

Those early clients barely had 30 million users and their daily actives were probably on the order of 20% of that. Whatsapp and Facebook messenger are approaching 1 billion users with daily actives at 70 to 80%. And far before that Skype trounced msn messenger. What I was trying to say is, they spent their time trying to get a piece of a pie that was ultimately irrelevant. It served little if any business purpose and trying to usurp AOL users to get a vanity metric was a form of self delusion. You need loyal, deeply rooted users who care about your product and your network. Trying to piggy back off someone else is applauded by short term people but you end up with a toxic and indifferent user base.

notahacker 11y ago
They might have been barely 30M users in the late 90s but at a time when that constituted most people using the internet for chat, I'm genuinely baffled that you think it was a "vanity metric" rather than a significant product enhancement to be able to communicate with them. In fact, I'm struggling to think of anything more likely to bootstrap a base of loyal users than the ability to talk to basically everyone else using chat applications on the internet. Any suggestions? (FWIW I'm not convinced they could have developed a VOIP service that functioned well over 28.8kbps dialup modems in the few hours they spent reverse engineering the latest changes to AOL's chat protocol. But yeah, if their engineers were that good, it would have been a nice market to win) Since MSN (or Windows Live) claimed 330m monthlies by the late-noughties - far ahead of Skype's superior product - I'd also hazard that they had significant success with getting loyal, deeply rooted users, even if they had the help of it coming installed with Windows. That's far more users than Snapchat, and probably more than the number of actual humans using Twitter, so I don't think the unicorn comparisons are invalid. Obviously the management structure was a little different from todays' chat startups, and "sell to Facebook for $20Bn" wasn't a monetisation option, but it was certainly an early outlying success in growing an mostly-ephemeral communication network and an early notable failure at turning that user base into profit.
- tsunamifury 11y ago
  Because if you were in the space you'd know that 330m monthlies is a worthless metric. This isn't a website, if those people are popping in once a month, they aren't really using it. MSN Messenger was never a success, and never really fit any strategic need or user need. They offered nothing to the market, and died when more useful products took their place with lower numbers but a more active, and valuable user base. (Skype). For all their work, I believe MSN messenger robbed themselves of the opportunity to discover their own value by trying to bootstrap someone elses success. Try to at least hear me out on this, because if think this is a good strategy to apply to a startup you are kidding yourself -- as a startup MSN messenger would have failed, and as an internal product it was also a significant failure (but one that took too long to be realized as such)
  - notahacker 11y ago
    The 330m user stat might not have been that impressive; Facebook was well on course to surpass it by then, but even as late as 2010 MSN/Live Messenger was apparently sending 9Bn daily messages from 1.5bn daily conversations. Which - I must admit I was surprised by this - is a lot more than Twitter boasts today. If those stats are evidence of failure to offer anything to the market I can only assume you don't regard the next generation of consumer startups that highly either. I'm not sure what additional value pioneering MSN users would have discovered from not being able to communicate with people using AIM, but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. At the time I found it a perfectly adequate chat client which my friends and I used exclusively, but I reiterate that I am open to suggestions of better ways for MS to have kickstarted the process of acquiring 230 million users in two years straddling the turn of the century. They robbed themselves of the chance of success because they didn't really have many ideas of what to do with all those users beyond try to drive them to their web portal or sell them emoticons, but for the time they managed seriously impressive growth and totally dominated the market.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

notahacker 11y ago

They might have been barely 30M users in the late 90s but at a time when that constituted most people using the internet for chat, I'm genuinely baffled that you think it was a "vanity metric" rather than a significant product enhancement to be able to communicate with them. In fact, I'm struggling to think of anything more likely to bootstrap a base of loyal users than the ability to talk to basically everyone else using chat applications on the internet. Any suggestions? (FWIW I'm not convinced they could have developed a VOIP service that functioned well over 28.8kbps dialup modems in the few hours they spent reverse engineering the latest changes to AOL's chat protocol. But yeah, if their engineers were that good, it would have been a nice market to win) Since MSN (or Windows Live) claimed 330m monthlies by the late-noughties - far ahead of Skype's superior product - I'd also hazard that they had significant success with getting loyal, deeply rooted users, even if they had the help of it coming installed with Windows. That's far more users than Snapchat, and probably more than the number of actual humans using Twitter, so I don't think the unicorn comparisons are invalid. Obviously the management structure was a little different from todays' chat startups, and "sell to Facebook for $20Bn" wasn't a monetisation option, but it was certainly an early outlying success in growing an mostly-ephemeral communication network and an early notable failure at turning that user base into profit.

tsunamifury 11y ago
Because if you were in the space you'd know that 330m monthlies is a worthless metric. This isn't a website, if those people are popping in once a month, they aren't really using it. MSN Messenger was never a success, and never really fit any strategic need or user need. They offered nothing to the market, and died when more useful products took their place with lower numbers but a more active, and valuable user base. (Skype). For all their work, I believe MSN messenger robbed themselves of the opportunity to discover their own value by trying to bootstrap someone elses success. Try to at least hear me out on this, because if think this is a good strategy to apply to a startup you are kidding yourself -- as a startup MSN messenger would have failed, and as an internal product it was also a significant failure (but one that took too long to be realized as such)
- notahacker 11y ago
  The 330m user stat might not have been that impressive; Facebook was well on course to surpass it by then, but even as late as 2010 MSN/Live Messenger was apparently sending 9Bn daily messages from 1.5bn daily conversations. Which - I must admit I was surprised by this - is a lot more than Twitter boasts today. If those stats are evidence of failure to offer anything to the market I can only assume you don't regard the next generation of consumer startups that highly either. I'm not sure what additional value pioneering MSN users would have discovered from not being able to communicate with people using AIM, but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. At the time I found it a perfectly adequate chat client which my friends and I used exclusively, but I reiterate that I am open to suggestions of better ways for MS to have kickstarted the process of acquiring 230 million users in two years straddling the turn of the century. They robbed themselves of the chance of success because they didn't really have many ideas of what to do with all those users beyond try to drive them to their web portal or sell them emoticons, but for the time they managed seriously impressive growth and totally dominated the market.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]