What Ever Happened to MSN Messenger?
It was the late 90s, social media platforms like Facebook didn't yet exist, texting was in its infancy, email was very popular, instant messaging was up for...
The bottom of the article links to the history (individual features) of other IM programs from that era as well like ICQ and Yahoo Messenger.
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Microsoft pivoted to Skype. Saved you a click and reading about 1000 words.
Which Microsoft then shit all over (to be fair, Skype started that process even before MS bought them) and eventually renamed it to Microsoft Teams.
And for a while, there was also Skype for Business (formerly Lync (formerly Communicator)).
Yeah that was part of the brand reshuffling they did to obfuscate things. Lync was their shitty chat app they tried to convince businesses to use that everyone hated. They bought Skype, renamed it to Microsoft Teams, renamed Lync to Skype for Business, and killed MSN Messenger. When people still didn't want to use LyncSkype for Business, then they killed that as well, and now it's just MS Teams.
Fun fact any developer working with the api can tell you, there is a clear distinction between de voip bit and the meeting/chat bit. They haven't bothered rewriting or integrating it in any way so the Skype for business backend is still very much alive.
Another fun fact: On the backend, Teams uses SharePoint to store files, and Exchange to store message. The whole M365 stack is a house of cards built on ancient tech. It's a wonder it works at all.
Lync was such garbage. I used that for years at one of my old jobs. Teams just feels like discord with extra shittiness lol.
The worst part is that they had developed an in-house app that worked amazing but abandoned it for teams.
Still remember setting up lync 2013 for our company. It was one of the funner projects I remember doing. I was not as thrilled about setting up SharePoint 2013....
For a while? Our business used it until ... this year. It's finally EOL this year.
If I remember correctly the Skype for business still identified as communicator on the about page.
The process was skype.exe, so Lync was Skype with a skin.
I have use teams at work and I hate it.
Slack is okay. Teams is full rubbish. I can’t disagree with you. Fuck teams.
I'm so old that I used Skype when it had a red logo.
And the video chats were choppy and black and white and with delayed audio. Those were the days...
Actually, to Lync first. Then Teams. All three suck.
Skype was never meant to replace MSN, even back then everyone complained about it and we talked on teamspeak while playing games.
Yep. I hate clickbait. You're a legend