Inside Windows Live Messenger Archive

Hi everyone,

Did you notice? We haven’t posted anything new here for awhile. We’ve officially stopped maintaining this blog.

If you need technical help with anything from Windows Live, try the Windows Live Solution Center.

To get the inside story from the people who build Windows Live, check out the Inside Windows Live blog, where Windows Live engineers and executives blog about all the Windows Live services, how they’re built, and how we decide what to add or improve as we build the latest new features.

There is a great blog post there about the upcoming version of Messenger (link).

For tips and updates about cool things you can do with Windows Live, check out the Hotmail and Messenger pages on Facebook. You can also follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/windowslive. Thanks for all your support and see you on the new Inside Windows Live blog!

The Windows Live team

Today marks the premiere of a new program named Health Tech Today, which features informative interviews with some of the world’s top health leaders; compelling health-related personal stories; and the latest new technology and IT innovations.  The show is hosted by Dr. Bill Crounse and the premiere episode features an interview with eHealth adovcate, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

So what does this have to do with Messenger and why are we writing about it on the MessengerSays blog?

Besides being a great show on a topic that many of us feel passionate about, we’re happy to say that Windows Live Messenger was used to conduct all of the remote video interviews.  A few weeks prior to the recording of the first episode we were approached by the producers asking if we thought the Messenger video call functionality would work for the live interviews they wanted to conduct with guests from all around the world.  We said ‘of course’ and after a quick discussion it was clear that Messenger would indeed meet all their needs.

The producers explained to us that they would typically have to transport the guests to a studio and pay a hefty fee to setup a live satellite-link.  They were very excited at how simple it was to setup a video call and not only did they save money (free!), but the guests didn’t even have to leave their homes to do the interviews.

This was a great win-win situation for everyone (except maybe the satellite-link owners) and the team is looking forward to hearing about more instances where our technology was used to bring things like this together.

Check out the episode for yourself at http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/healthtechtoday 

Try a video call yourself!

Thanks,
Tolga & Lonn
Windows Live Messenger Team

In September, we began asking users on 8.1 clients to upgrade to the latest version of messenger to ensure that they had the most up to-date and secure release.  (see post)

Starting today, users on version 8.5 will also be required to upgrade before they can sign-in to the service.  Starting on the November 9th, users on Messenger 2009 (version 14) will need to upgrade their clients too.  Users who have already installed the latest version, which was released Aug 18th 2009 (Build: 14.0.8089.726),  will not be required to upgrade.

If you are using Messenger 2009 and are curious what version you have, you can go to the Help –> About Menu.

If you have any issues or questions during the upgrade process, here are the places you can go to get some answers.

Note: Users on Windows XP will need to ensure that they have installed Service Pack 2 (SP2) or higher, otherwise the upgrade will not work.  Instructions to install the latest Service Pack (SP3) can be found here.  Additionally, here is more information about the system requirements.

Thanks for everyone’s continued support.

Sincerely,
The Windows Live Messenger Team

Over the past few weeks we have been asking customers using previous versions of Windows Live Messenger to upgrade to the latest version in order to ensure they had the most up-to-date and secure release.  If you’d like to learn more about this upgrade and why we’re doing this, please see the previous blog post, Upgrade Windows Live Messenger.

Starting today, if you are using version 8.1, you will be required to upgrade before you will be able to sign-in.  After upgrading you will be able to sign-in and if you’re interested in learning more about the new release, please visit the Windows Live Messenger information page.

We’ve seen comments from a few users stating that they have had some trouble signing-in after the upgrade and wanted to provide a few resources.  The following links can help you in case you’re having an issue.

Update: Users on Windows XP will need to ensure that they have installed Service Pack 2 (SP2) or higher, otherwise the upgrade will not work.  Instructions to install the latest Service Pack (SP3) can be found here.  Additionally, here is more information about the system requirements.

Thanks,
The Windows Live Messenger Team

We are currently experiencing technical issues that may cause you to have trouble sending IMs.  We are working quickly to fix this issue and apologize for the inconvenience.

-The Windows Live Messenger Team

Update: 3:10pm PST

We’ve fixed the issue and things are returning back to normal.  Thanks for your patience.

We are committed to providing a safe, secure and positive experience for our more than 300 million customers across the globe using Windows Live Messenger every month. To deliver on that commitment, beginning on August 25, we started asking our customers using versions 8.1, 8.5 and 14.0 to upgrade to the newest version of Messenger. The upgrade will provide customers with the latest software updates including code fixes and feature enhancements, as well address vulnerabilities discussed in the Microsoft Security Advisory 973882 that existed in previous versions of Windows Live Messenger.

The upgrade process will take place in a phased approach over the next several weeks:

First Phase, Optional Upgrade:
The optional upgrade will happen in two stages:
Starting Aug. 25, customers using versions 8.1 or 8.5 were asked to upgrade their client.
Starting early Oct., all customers using versions 14.0 (but not the latest release 14.0.8089) will be asked to upgrade their client.
The upgrade at this time is optional. Customers who haven’t upgraded during the optional phase will be required to do so during the second phase. 

Second Phase, Mandatory Upgrade:
The mandatory upgrade will happen in three stages:
Starting mid-Sept., all customers using Messenger 8.1 or 8.5 will be required to upgrade their version of Windows Live Messenger.
Starting late Oct., all customers using Messenger 14.0 will be required to upgrade their version of Windows Live Messenger.
To ensure that we are protecting customers, those who do not administer the upgrade will not be able to sign in to Messenger after this time.

Please Note: It will take several weeks for the upgrade process to be completed, as the upgrade will be rolled out to customers over the course of several weeks. 

Below are some examples of the prompts that you will encounter during the upgrade process. 

Notification to upgrade.

Want to upgrade now?  You don’t have to wait for the notification. In fact, we encourage you to download the updated version of Messenger right now by visiting http://download.live.com .

If you aren’t sure which version you have, you can go to the Help menu and select About Messenger.  Help –> About Messenger.  If you have a version that is lower than 14.0.8089 you will need to upgrade.

New Features and Improvements

There are a ton of great new features and improvements in the current version of Windows Live Messenger (14.0.8089) that we know you will be impressed with. In fact, Windows Live Messenger won both the Editor’s Choice distinction by PC Mag as well as a 2009 Webware 100 award from CNet honoring the people’s choice for the best Web 2.0 apps and services. Learn more about all the new features in Windows Live Messenger here.

Users upgrading from 14.0

Customers currently using Windows Live Messenger 14 are already enjoying the new features of the latest version of Window Live Messenger. We’re doing our best to minimize the impact this upgrade may have on our customers and apologize for any inconvenience it may cause.

To answer any questions you may have, we’ve provided a short FAQ about the upgrade process below.

Thanks,
The Windows Live Messenger Team

FAQ – Windows Live Messenger update

What are the changes with the new upgrade?
The changes vary depending on which version of Windows Live Messenger people currently have on their PC. The process will upgrade customers of Windows Live Messenger 8.1 or 8.5 to our latest version. Separately, customers who installed Windows Live Messenger client 14.0 before August 19, 2009 will receive a code fix, but there will be no visible feature changes. 

What is new in the latest version of Windows Live Messenger?
With the current version of Windows Live Messenger, several new, socially oriented features and an entirely new look and feel were introduced:
• Personalization. Add a profile picture or video, display a personal scene in the chat window, update the status message with your news, add a favorite link, or add what song you’re listening to. 
• Integration of “What’s New” feed. With the “What’s New” feed in Messenger, you can stay in touch with the latest updates from your circle of friends at a glance, without any need to log in across multiple destinations.
• Photo sharing. Photo sharing lets you share and comment on pictures while you’re chatting.
• Favorites. Identify your most important contacts and they will appear at the top of your Messenger window, for easy access. It’s like speed dial for your Messenger contacts.
• Groups. Create groups on the fly and chat simultaneously with up to 20 members at the same time.              

Who will receive the upgrade notification?
All Windows Live Messenger clients with versions 8.1, 8.5 or 14.0 will receive the upgrade notification. Beginning August 25, customers of Messenger 8.1 or 8.5 were prompted to upgrade their client. Customers who installed the latest Windows Live Messenger client (14.0) before August 19, 2009 will start receiving an upgrade notification in September 2009. Customers of older versions of MSN Messenger on Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, Windows Me or Windows 98 will not receive an upgrade notification.

Update (Aug 28 6:30pm PST) 

Hi everyone, we’ve had several comments about what happens if you are running an operating system on which you cannot install the latest version of Messenger.  In this case, you will NOT be prompted to upgrade and can continue to use the version you currently have.

To clarify, if you are running Messenger 8.1, 8.5 or 14.0 on the following operating systems: Windows XP 32bit, Windows Vista (32bit/64bit), Windows 7( 32bit/64bit) or Windows Server 2008, you will receive the upgrade notice.  See this link for the system requirements of the latest version. http://download.live.com/SystemRequirements

10 years ago today, MSN Messenger v1.0 was released to the world and users all around the world began downloading it via their 28.8/56.6k dial-up modems. :p.

Over the past few weeks we received an overwhelming number of fascinating stories from all of you on topics ranging from “How to propose using Messenger” to “How to use Messenger as a security camera”, all of which reminds us about why we love working on this product.

Windows Live Messenger is where it is today because of YOU, our users.  We couldn’t have done it without you and in return, we thought about hosting a party, but with 330 million of you to invite, I couldn’t convince any of the team members to hold it at their place. 🙂  Instead, you’ll have to settle for the next best thing… a homemade celebration video (nicely pasted to the left for your viewing pleasure).

Hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.  Thank you for all your support over the past 10 years, and here’s to another 10! 🙂

After you’ve checked out the video, here are some things you can do to celebrate Messenger’s 10th anniversary with us:

• Visit our Messenger anniversary celebration site in the US or in the UK and download a special anniversary gift pack with free themes and emoticons.
• Send a Happy Anniversary IM to at least 10 of your friends and let them guess whose anniversary you’re celebrating (you can use a 10 Year Anniversary emoticon to make it a bit easier for them) 

Fun Fact – did you know that…

Messenger users come back to log-in to Windows Live Messenger on average 3 times a day. That is about as often as the average person would sit down to have a meal.

And when they log-in they send a *LOT* of messages to their friends and family! Let’s come back to our space travel example from yesterday:

People are trying to estimate how many stars we have in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The current estimate is approx 300 billion. For Messenger we don’t have to estimate, we have the numbers – could you have imagined that the average 9.4 billion messages that are sent per day add up to about 290 billion messages every month, which pretty much equals the estimated number of stars in our galaxy?!

Looking back to the early days of Windows Live Messenger – here is how one of our users remembers these days:

 Steve (USA): Early Days Experiences

I remember first using MSN Messenger back when I signed up for the MSN dial-up internet service in 1999.  At that time, I only had one friend who used MSN Messenger, and we would chat on the computer from time to time.

Shortly thereafter, as we got older and entered high school, so many more of my friends started signing up for Hotmail and MSN Messenger.

 One of my fondest memories is in my eighth grade year, when my friends had a study hall in the computer lab for the last period of the day.  We’d all get on MSN Messenger and have group chats.  Since at that time there was a limit as to how many people could be in one chat (I’m not sure if there still is or not), it was always a race to join the chat, and almost a privilege to be included in the conversation.

Chatting with each other while we all had headphones on listening to music, sharing links and transferring songs back and forth really made that study hall a blast.

Steve, USA

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY EVERYBODY!!!!

We have a special treat for today – Ten years ago tomorrow, Microsoft launched one of its most innovative communication services – Windows Live Messenger (then known as MSN Messenger). Throughout its many stages of evolution over the years, Windows Live Messenger – with 330 million users – has become the most widely used free instant messaging service in the world. To celebrate ten fantastic years, we asked Danny Glasser (Partner Development Manager, Windows Live), one of the founding members of the Windows Live Messenger team to share how Microsoft decided to launch Windows Live Messenger. Here’s his story:

In 1997, while working on Microsoft NetMeeting, Danny was dealing with a flaw in the product. Users of NetMeeting, an audiovisual communication client, were having trouble finding the people they wanted to talk to. This wasn’t exactly ideal for a service that billed itself as a collaboration tool, so the team set out to find a fix. The proposed solution: Enable NetMeeting users to maintain a list of the people they cared about, to be able to see when those contacts were online, and to be able to initiate NetMeeting calls easily with those contacts. It was dubbed the “Buddy List” project.

NetMeeting is no more, but what the team came up with ultimately became the world’s number one instant messaging service. Ten years ago today, MSN Messenger made its debut. “It definitely felt like we were working on something special,” said Danny. “I don’t know that I could have predicted accurately the number of people who would use it, but we had a feeling it would be a big thing.”

Looking back, Danny said he’s amazed at how huge Messenger has become. At the outset, scalability was one of the team’s biggest concerns. Inside the hallway of a building on Microsoft’s RedWest campus the team put up a real-time counter showing the number of simultaneous online connections (SOCs) around the clock. They started with tens of thousands and hit the 1 million mark after a year; today, Windows Live Messenger sees about 40 million SOCs.

“To see the influence we have had, not just at Microsoft and with customers, but the way it has affected people’s lives, I’m very gratified to have played a part in it” says Danny.

Amazing work indeed! Happy anniversary and congratulations (and thank you) to the Messenger “v1 team” and everyone who has worked hard to make Windows Live Messenger what it is today!

It’s interesting to note that although NetMeeting is no more, people across the globe use Windows Live Messenger to chat during business meetings. Nearly a quarter (21 percent) of Americans recently surveyed use Messenger during business meetings; of those people, roughly 83 percent say they IM “fairly often” during meetings to make after-work plans.

While it’s interesting to visit Messenger’s beginnings it’s exciting to think about how far the product has come.  Over the past year,  Messenger has delivered a host of fun ways to communicate and share including new ways to share photos, personalize how you chat and stay up to date with what your friends are doing across the web, including on Facebook and Flickr.

Care for a fun fact for the anniversary?

(This one is also in honor of the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing.)

Imagine if a single-page letter was mailed for every one of the 1.6 billion Messenger sessions that happen every day. The individual pages lined up one after another would stack up to the moon within a day! The weight would weigh 33 times more than the Endeavor Space Shuttle (with boosters and tank).

And by the way, using Messenger instead saves 2.8 million trees every day.  🙂

The following story is a small example of what happens in the 1.6 billion sessions shared every day on Messenger.

Amanda (USA/Holland): a long distance love story

My name is Amanda and I live in Ohio. My Windows Live Messenger story starts in January of 2004.

I met a guy on a website and we swapped Windows Live Messenger screen names. Using chat and voice chat we talked for over 40 hours in just 4 days! It was the perfect way to stay in touch especially since I was in Ohio and he was in Den Haag Holland. The phone bill would have been insane without the messenger!

We talked each day using Windows Live Messenger and finally met face to face in April 2004 and we immediately got engaged. When he had to return to Holland we continued to keep in touch almost strictly using Windows Live and Hotmail.

In September 2004 he moved from Holland to Ohio so we could get married. I’ll never forget how excited and happy I was when he told me he was finally going to move! It was the best day in both of our lives at that point!

We got married on November 20th, 2004 and had a daughter Prudence February 7th, 2006. This year we celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary and none of it wouldn’t have been possible without the connection we made thanks to Windows Live Messenger!

We easily logged thousands of hours of chat, voice chat, and webcam between the time we met online and the time we were finally together!

Over 6000 miles separated us but the distance didn’t seem quite so big when we could see and hear each other every day.

– Amanda (Ohio, USA)

That’s the question we asked Windows Live Messenger community celebrities Sunshine (Netherlands), RebelSean (USA), Kip (USA), Jonathan (Canada), mynetx (Germany) this week as part of our Messenger 10th Anniversary blog post series.  These guys (and girl) not only strive to help make the product better through participating in betas and providing enormous amounts of valuable feedback, but also generously volunteer their time to help other users on forums/IRC etc, or even through their own blogs.  And I repeat, they don’t work for Microsoft, but do it out of the goodness of their . All also happen to be Windows Live experts and established industry bloggers.

It’s always great to speak with Messenger enthusiasts and we will definitely need to follow-up with more in-depth interviews in the future, but for today, I’ll just share with you a few questions/answers from our conversations.

Q. Why do you use Messenger?
mynetx says: I love Messenger because it enables me to stay in touch with my friends continuously, whether they are living in my neighborhood or on the other side of the world. Messenger allows me to chat, to help, to think, to share, to meet my most dear friends, regardless of their actual location, and without me having to leave the house.

sunshine says: it’s indispensible to keep in touch with all those online friends (uhuh, can’t you tell I’m a geek…lol) and to talk to co-bloggers of course, imagine having to call everybody, and the time differences…!

Kip: I was not a messenger user until I got involved in betas. I was kind of dragged into it by the other LiveSide members, but now I find it indispensible, I use Messenger every day, it’s the best way to ask a quick question

Q. Why do you beta test?
RebelSean says: There were lots of reasons why I became a beta tester. The main reason I’d say is because I wanted to see Messenger grow and become more functional. I believe I and every other beta tester over the years have shaped WLM into what it is today. Another reason would be is the fact that I enjoy testing software and finding bugs and incompatibilities. I do remember one (bug), it was some sort of random key combination that instantly crashed Messenger and BSOD’ed my XP machine. Was confirmed by almost everyone on Connect (Connect is the Beta forum)

Q. Why do you help people with their Messenger issues?
mynetx says: I think sharing my knowledge about Windows Live Messenger is the least I can do. I find it odd if somebody has knowledge about a certain product, yet does not share it—you cannot make best use of Messenger unless you connect to its users and find out what is in their mind.  People often have problems with Messenger, but that is not always caused by the program itself. Thus I help to detect the real cause for errors and thus encourage people to get to know more Messenger features.

A few fun facts:
– Jonathan once had a 24 hour Messenger audio call (he left the computer a few times during that time period but the call was connected the entire time).  Somehow the call was disconnected and he ended up being unable to reconnect to the internet until the other computer was turned off since it was flooding his connection with requests. (this bug has since been fixed.) 🙂
– Sunshine turns her computer off at night incase it short circuits and catches fire while she is sleeping! 🙂
– Jonathan uses the emoticon on average 1.4 times per message.

So in the end, what was their favorite emoticon?  Here are the results. How about you? What’s your favorite emoticon?  Leave a comment with the characters… like 🙂 or (@)
RebelSean-    mynetx –   Jonathan –   Kip –   Sunshine –

I asked everyone what they would write on a birthday card for Messenger, and here’s what they said.

Today’s Messenger story comes from RebelSean himself.  I’ve cut and paste the story from our chat below.  Enjoy.

Using Windows Live Messenger as a security system :),
RebelSean, USA.

RebelSean says:
Lets see, a story regarding Messenger. Last year when we were on vacation in Chicago, someone called my mom’s cell phone from our house phone. Knowing that my entire family was in Chicago at the time, someone was obviously in our house that shouldn’t be. So I thought and thought, is there anyway I can somehow hack into my computer and open my webcam to see if we can see anything. Then I remembered that we had left the computer on and I had left Messenger signed in. So using MPOP and a virtual desktop connection I got my webcam up and running.

Apparently my neighbor had heard my dog was making very loud noises like it was hurt, and broke into the house to make sure he was ok. He had gotten stuck under our couch in the den and couldn’t get out, so she saved his life.

Lonn says:
oh wow, that’s an awesome story, so did you actually see anything on the webcam?

RebelSean says:
We saw our neighbor leaving the house as for our desk in the living room is a corner desk across the room from our front door.
So we knew something had to be wrong for them to come into the house, and we called her and she explained the situation.

So that’s how you use Messenger as a security system… 😉

Fun Fact of the day:
Messenger connects people worldwide with their friends and family – did you know that with a IM category reach of 60%* Windows Live Messenger is the most widely used free instant messaging service in the world. All over the world 6 out of 10 instant messaging users choose Windows Live Messenger to chat with their friends.

Less than 1 week until the 10th Anniversary!  Thanks for reading…

– Windows Live Messenger Team

*Source: Comscore May 2009

12 more days until the big day – Messenger’s 10th Anniversary! 

Messenger Fun Facts:
1) The typing indicator ()seems trivial today, but actually it was a tricky problem back in the early days – how could you show that someone was entering a message without showing every single character (and their typos). The Messenger team invented the typing indicator for that purpose, which today is used by every chat client.

2) The nudge was introduced with MSN Messenger 7.0 on April 7^th 2005. Since then it is even easier to get attention from your favorite chat partner – even if they might not always appreciate your nudges! 😉

I didn’t even know that the Messenger team invented the “typing indicator” until today, but I don’t know what I’d do without it! 🙂  

Before I share today’s user submitted story, I wanted to quickly introduce you to the Messenger program management team.  This team, led by Steven, works with several other teams such as design, usability, development , testing, etc to help bring Windows Live Messenger to your computer. They have a challenging but rewarding job. Look for posts from them in the future!  Special thanks to Sameer for putting this post together.

Meet the Messenger Client PM team

Now for today’s user story, in his own words…

Lenin (Ecuador): “Loving the Sound of new messages coming in”

Hi, this is Lenin, writing from Cuenca, Ecuador.

Technology has been one of my passions for my whole life and since Internet appeared I haven’t gone away from my computer. I spent hours in the IRC channels until someone had the genial idea of creating MSN Messenger (in those faraway times).

It was the best thing that could have happened to chats, in all chats and IRCs, people were typing: “Use the Messenger", and everyone was speaking of its big usefulness. After spending a week chatting with someone, it was: "Give me your ‘Hotmail’ so I can add you to mess".

And since that era, 1999, in all the cybercafés it was heard the nice wav sound: "new message" at every moment. Everyone was using it, times changed, years passed, there were new versions released with new features and in every computer it was essential to have Messenger.

And now, 10 years after, being called Windows Live Messenger and having the chance to change the sound for new messages or nudges, but I don’t do it because I’m used to that "toorooroon", it is part of my life. All my contacts are there, I’ve changed my Passport something like 5 times, but my buddies remain, all my life is there.
Greets…! 😉

—
Thanks for that submission Lenin!  (BTW, anyone know when the sound for incoming messages was first introduced? What’s your guess?)
-Windows Live Messenger Team