It might be RIP MSN Messenger but I’m still holding on!

Many people, including myself, feel nostalgic when we hear the word M-S-N: three letters that can trigger a flood of memories. I remember constantly updating my name and picture, I remember being yelled at to disconnect so mum could use the home phone and I remember just how many hours I spent in front of the computer chatting on MSN! When I heard that MSN messenger was finally being completely shut down it felt as though a whole era of my teenage years was being deleted.

Only a few weeks ago, it has been announced that Microsoft will be finally pulling the plug on long-running instant messenger MSN with China being the last to be cut off from the servers by October 31, 2014. It will end a 15-year run for Windows Live Messenger that was announced in 2012when the corporation bought video-calling and instant messaging platform Skype back in 2012. When hearing this news I found myself looking back on MSN, and the impact that it had on my life.

For many of us late 80’s and 90’s babies, MSN Messenger is synonymous with growing up. As BBC reporter Dave Lee writes “MSN Messenger was a hard-working internet visionary which taught a generation to touch-type and lol. It touched the lives of millions of teenagers who, in an age before real social networking, were just getting accustomed to what it was like to live on the internet”.

For many people the social web started in 2005 with the advent of Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 companies. In reality the social web really became a forerunner of the internet in the MSN era. MSN taught us everything we know.

MSN taught us the art of wasting time in front of a monitor. Before Messenger became a hit it seemed as though spending your days on a computer was considered “geeky.” MSN made it a common occurrence.

MSN also taught us a whole new language. It taught us how to save time by abbreviating everything and using smiley faces to portray our emotion.

Finally, MSN taught us a new way to be social by heralding a new era where chatting up a classmate no longer meant the terrifying prospect of actually having to say something to them. It saw a turn away from needing a phone or a landline to chat with your friends. It taught us the way of communicating online which is now so engrained in our lives.

In an unfortunate turn for MSN the new guys came in strong. As Dave Lee writes “After all the “ASL?”s and “u there?”s, Messenger’s loyal subjects became less dependent. “I’ll brb”, people said… but they never did. Other sites, smarter and better looking, would see Messenger cast aside .In an age of exciting digital discovery, Messenger became the web’s wooden toy”.

Although I haven’t used MSN for at least 6 years I was extremely sad to hear that it is being shut down. I felt as though a whole era of my childhood was being deleted. Gone forever: without anything to hold onto. What I want to know is what actually happens to all that data that they have stored for all those years? I know I would pay money to read some of those conversations again, to re-live the memories and even just to archive for years to come.

In the past we have been able to preserve physical objects as relicts like old telephones to remind us how we used to communicate. But as we move further into this digital age of communication, how can we preserve these memories? MSN is being shut down forever, but what is being done to ensure that it is memorialized?

One example of the memorialization of a digital platform is GeoCities: a web hosting service. Prior to the shutdown of Geocities in 2009, Archive Team pledged to save our digital heritage. They made a backup of Geocities just before it shut down. Now, information designer Richard Vijgen turned the 650 GB data file into an amazing visualization called The Deleted City, in which the users of Geocities are displayed as tenants in an enormous virtual city.

As Jason Scott, member of Achieve Team explains, this act of memorialization had people “tearful after they recovered data they thought was lost forever. I don’t expect these expressions of gratefulness to die down anytime soon. It was worth it before, for history, but it’s worth it even more knowing we’ve made lives and memories better for this”.

So what is being done to memorialise MSN? Besides a few Facebook pages and Youtube vidoes? In this ever expanding online world, it seems that with each bigger and better method of communication, the old ones are just being cast aside and shut down. Shut down with nothing left for future generations to look at and ponder what live used to be like and leaving us with very litter reminder of how we used to communicate.

So for now it’s a ‘gone but not forgotten’ for MSN as Microsoft prepare to finally pull the plug on many youngsters’ childhoods. While I might not have anything to hold onto I want to say thanks MSN- I will never forget the fun we shared, you will be missed.