Dear Microsoft: 7 Reasons Why Windows Live Messenger is Starting to Suck.
To celebrate the coming of Facebook’s Instant Messenger, which some refer to as the “Messenger Killer”, I thought we could reminisce about the bloody history of Instant Messaging, and the current state of affairs.
Some of you may remember a simpler time of instant messaging, when ‘uh-oh’ sounds and crudely drawn happy faces reigned supreme. ICQ, the first massively popular instant messaging program on the web, attracted users with multicoloured chat rooms and basic user profiling. However, ICQ isn’t a term we hear round these parts too often anymore. That’s because circa 1998, King Microsoft ventured into IM land with their mandatory installs and predatory practices, stomping it out with its simple (but elegant) Windows Messenger. Despite cries from dedicated ICQ’ers about the inefficiencies of the software, it was only a matter of time, and MSN Messenger’s advantage of being built in to Windows eventually powered its way to victory (not before Mirabilis, the makers of ICQ, sold to AOL in 1998 for a cool $287 Million).
Fast forward a few years or ten, and we’re all using Microsoft’s latest incarnation: Windows Live Messenger. It’s a sure fire way of getting in touch with friends. And it sucks. Year after year another useless feature is piled on, and now we’ve got software which takes minutes to load despite the fact that at its core, it is relaying text messages between computers.
What follows is a list of “What were you thinking?” additions. Sit back and take the time to enjoy this, because I know we’re going to feel some camaraderie on how terrible we’ve been treated for the last few years as users of Messenger. Incidentally, if anybody’s listening at Microsoft: please take these features out before a competitor beats you at the relatively simple game of instant messaging. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
1) Tabs
Is it really necessary for my instant messaging client to “Sizzle”, as the Kiwee tab in this screenshot intends? I just want to talk to my friends. This tab is obviously ignored 99% of the time, but let’s say I’ve just hit the most mind-numbing day of boredom ever conceived, and I decide to give KiWee tabbing a shot. My first impression of the service would be what you see in the screenshot: one quarter of a page where about half of a ‘tool bar’ (?) is visible. I am asked to ‘log in’. Aren’t I already logged in? Simply put: What the hell does this tab mean? Fail.
2) Pay-for-use Emoticons
… Are you actually serious? I always have to wonder if there are actually people out there that will pay for a small yellow face that has a slightly deformed smile as compared to the default emoticons given with Messenger. If you enjoy this and are reading this (almost impossible, as we have intelligence restrictions by IP address), please, let me know that I’m “out of the loop” and “all the cool kids are doing it”. Another great element of this feature is that it now takes twice as long to load the emoticon selection window.
3) The Customer Improvement Program
Everytime I start Live Messenger (and wait a few minutes for it to load) I am rewarded with the space under my name asking me to “Learn More About the Customer Improvement Program”. Despite the fact that most of Messenger’s glaring oversights should have been handled by the designers eons ago, I decide I’ll do them the favour (without pay) of letting them know what to fix, by clicking through… Hold on a second! This pop-up isn’t saying “Please enter your feedback”: It says “let us collect statistics about your Messenger usage”. Well I’m not signing up for that. Where is the option to remove this ‘customer service’ notice from my limited-space on Messenger? Nowhere? Shouldn’t this message have some sort of option to disappear? It’s been there for two years! If I didn’t click it the first time, I’m not going to do it now. Isn’t it kind of mandatory that good software allow me to remove things like this? Then again… is this good software?
4) Winks
I know exactly what you thought of this, because it’s exactly what I thought of this. “Wow, that was pretty cool.” Probably, that was the first and last time you ever used “Winks”. I’m not sure where lies the fun-factor in letting other people have the power to slap minute long animations with terrible sound across your conversation window, and probably on top of your music. But even if that sounded like roses to me, couldn’t they come up with something better than a kid throwing a balloon? After all, this is a product of the richest, brightest, most influential technology corporation in the world. Or is that Google now? Bonus: this feature also takes a sweet minute to load. Are you seeing a pattern here Microsoft? These ‘cool new upgrades’ are slowing down my life.
5) Live Spaces
Get over it. It’s not going to work, even if all of a sudden you guys label it a “social network”. It’s just another page for me to submit photos and write information about myself. But since my actual friend list is only barely integrated into the Spaces page, I guess I’m just posting for myself. You want this feature to make some impact? Let me tag the photos, let me have circles of friends, enable bulletin boards that automatically save conversations between my best friends. There’s so much you could do, but seeing as you’re not doing anything, drop it. Did I mention relabeling Spaces as a social network is like calling MySpace user-friendly? Check out my earlier post about this, where I have a screenshot of my Spaces news feed: (unknown name) has added (unknown name).
6) Sharing Folders
I’ve tried this three times, because I actually like the idea of having a web folder between me and my friend. Each of the three times I’ve tried, however, it has failed to connect, and not only that, each consecutive time I boot up Live Messenger, I’m now asked to resume these connections that failed in the first place. It is a P2P technology system (think BitTorrent) and I applaud MS for getting into that game, but don’t slap this button all over the place until you can have better guarantees of functionality. It doesn’t help that there is no longer a “Send File” option in my chat window, because it has been replaced with the broken “Sharing Folders”.
7) Windows Live Onecare Scanning Software
I’m sure any regular Messenger user saw this gripe coming back in section 2. It’s what prompted the article. The ‘last straw’, or so they say.
About a year back, I received a file from my brother. “This file may potentially be harmful” appeared to me in an anciently styled grey box. Considering the only option was to click “OK”, I did. Heading over and checking my “My Received Files” folder, I noticed the file was deleted without notice. It had taken an hour to transfer. This now happens daily with users and files of all types, and it’s gone so far as to condition us to avoid clicking the download link from within our Messenger window… for no good reason. I’ve virus-scanned and tested files that have been blocked, and there was nothing wrong with the file. If you ever get this error, please ignore it, then open the file in a separate window, and try scanning it: 9 times out of 10 it’s fine. What an absurd, unacceptable user experience. If software like this was released by a new startup technology company, it wouldn’t just fail, the company would get purposely and systematically refused funding for ever launching another project again.
This gets better though. A few months ago, Microsoft released Windows Live OneCare Scanner. My first impression was that it took literally 10 minutes to load while some obscure and frankly unofficial looking window loaded the software the first time a file was transferred. The second time, the window hung up and never disappeared. The third time? See image.
Windows Live OneCare informs me the file has been scanned and is fine. I click the link, the first time in a long time that I felt safe to click without my transfer being deleted… And that pop up appears again! “There seems to be a potential problem with the file”!? That’s impossible. OneCare just said that it was fine… I give up.
In closing, Microsoft, this scathing catharticism is not an attempt to ‘beat on the big guy’ as has been done to you so many times before. It’s not any sort of Damocles’-esque suggestion to switch to open source software. Heck, I’m not even harping on the constant, rotating banner ads (remove them). This piece is a request from a legitimate, long-term user who has put up with annoyance after annoyance and simply has come to a point of exhaustion. I’m not going to stop using Messenger, nor are all my friends. We’ve grown together using Messenger. But please, for the love of money, pay attention to your users… or else!
Rant.End();
Extra TidBits:
1) When searching for the ICQ ‘uh-oh’ sound link, the first link that came up was an ‘uh-oh’ ringtone. I can’t even believe this sort of thing constitutes an ‘industry’.
2) This all may seem a bit harsh, but it has to be. We’ve worked in technology before, and let me tell you, the Q&A (testing) guys do NOT get heard unless they scream. It’s a real problem in software development.
3) Yes, you can see the research for this article in the screenshot about the customer improvement program. I was debating whether to take it out, but
if you’re reading this far, it hasn’t significantly impacted your
experience.
Tabs can be hidden in the options menu.
Winks and pay-for-use emoticons are pointless, it’s a messenger, not a video game. I
LiveSpaces, seriously, does it matter? It’s not even pressuring you to use it.
And if you want to transfer files, you’re far better off using an intermediary service like putfile, rapidshare, or something similar. You and your recipient will probably get better transfers because of this.
–
Basically, you made a blog entry whining about all these extra features that you don’t need to use and may even be able to turn off.
Trillian Basic or GAIM might be more down your alley, or you could just make a few options tweaks to your MSN Live and move along with your life.
My favourite aspect is the fact that they have an ungodly low max-character limit per message. If I’m telling a story or pasting something to a friend, I have to chop it up in to multiple messages… quite ridiculous. I didn’t know bandwidth was that tight of a commodity in 2008.
The problem with facebook’s IM is that you need to be a member of facebook - something a few people are adverse to (myself included).
I don’t see why I should sign up to a website in order to talk to my friends - a website I can never delete my details from, either.
And don’t then say MSN (WLM) requires this also, because thats not actually true. It just needs a live account, and this can be done via any manner of ways - none of my accounts are hotmail, for example - and if I don’t activate them on other sections of Live, they never bother me.
And complaining about Spaces when you mention the facebook IM…uh…sorry remind me, what is Spaces? Uh-huh? And facebook? Heh.
Of course, some of these points are valid - theres a nice bit of software which permanently turns off extras and adverts for your current WLM install. Go for a google.
http://www.pidgin.im/
In a fraction of the time you spent writing this, and presumably for a fraction of the inconvenience you describe, you could have installed Pidgin, or Digsby, or Trillian Basic, or just headed over to Meebo, rather than suffering through a broken product and complaining about it.
QA is quality assurance / testing. Q&A is question and answer. In any company worth their salt, QA’s role is to make sure the product created matches the spec, not to decide if it is good or bad. If the spec is broken by business requirements out of touch with decent user experience, the product will be too in order to pass QA.
First of all, thanks for the comments, and reading my rant. I had a lot of fun writing it and feedback is very very appreciated. That said, I seem to be getting flak from Staypuft, Kireas and David for not simply using an IM amalgamation tool.
I didn’t write this simply because my personal experience was bad: I write it because I have a personal vendetta against bad design. The writers here at Facebook Insight are Engineers, and have seen a lot of our great developers head to Microsoft to work under designers who talk a lot and listen less.
And it’s troublesome when a company can dole massive amounts of resources, leverage the operating system to control the IM market and buy out competitors makes a product so bad that it’s OBVIOUS that people should use other tools that access the MS network.
The article is called “Dear Microsoft” because I hope some of my old friends at the company will hear the call and maybe try to produce a better product.
Thanks again!
Dear Microsoft: Seven Reasons why Messenger is starting to suck | Facebook Insight…
To celebrate the coming of Facebook’s Instant Messenger, which some refer to as the “Messenger Killer”, I thought we could reminisce about the bloody history of Instant Messaging, and the current state of affairs….
STUMBLED!
Great post, I use MSN Live Messenger, I do have had numerous issues with trying to send files. I use it probably every couple of days so I just bear with it.
I tried Trillian, I may check it our again and drop MSN.
Amazing how a company the size of MS can’t make something as simple as a messenger without screwing it up. But, IE isn’t much better.
VOTED for you at:
http://www.newsdots.com/blogging/seven-reasons-why-messenger-is-starting-to-suck-facebook-insight/
ive never had a problem with the sharing folders, and if you jsut drag a file into the space where you type messages it wills end it normally, but beyond that good rant.
USed to use WLM religiously, got sick of it, got n ASUS EEE (best invention ever) and saw the light. Forced to use Pigeon on the EEE, i dod some research into which clients I like best and I have to say aMSN is a pretty damn good alternative, in fact all of them simplify the monstrous overcomplicated mess that used to be my most beloved of applications =]
Stumbled, btw.
I stumbled upon you blog post, and would have to agree that I think with most of the IM packages the authors seem to have been exploring the ways they can make $ out of the IM rather than giving us a clean useful tool we can use.
I have accounts on most of the IM services, and if you have ever tried to run 4 or 5 IM clients you’ll know what it does to your PC.
Sadly it seems that having advertising, and free gimmicks added is the way to pay for an application, luckily there are other products out there you can replace it with.
I’ve tried many of those too, and am currently sticking with the newest I’ve found, Digsby. I can’t see me ever going back to a single protocol IM client because I want it to do what I want, IM, not take over my PC with gimmicks.
Great Post. Thanks!
agreed with most of the rant. another thing, there has got to be a better way to thread messages than have a new window open for each conversation, PLUS a window for your contact list. Clearly all this can be taken care of in one usable window… I havent tried facebook chat, but I seem to remember some screenshots of “popping out the chatroom” which acheived this well…
there are some good ideas in WLM as well… i enjoy how a new chat window shows a couple of messages from the chat history before your new conversation.
first of all, great post…i almost felt this sense of nostalgia, as if I were reliving the first and only time I was forced to blunder through any of those useless and pathetically conceived cheap tricks so many years ago. I mean seriously microsoft, what the hell, you ARE the company that gave us DOS right?
Kinda reminds me of the windows hotmail live “upgrade”, which offered nothing except an unbearably slow experience, and still to this day prompts users to switch back to the old interface!! what?!
Learn a thing or two from Google, no install, no load times, instant messaging between gmail contacts. simple, brilliant. SEAMLESS.
I’m excited to see what facebook has to offer…
looking forward to your next post…
I may have missed it but I didn’t see a mention of it starting itself when the computer is booted. It seems like twice a month I have to remove it from the startup programs. I don’t use it, it slows everything down, yet whenever I get an update or do use it, it re-insinuates itself into my list of programs that start with my computer.Then it’s back to msconfig where I uncheck it and then the next boot I’m given a warning that tells me I’ve done exactly what I meant to do and if I’m not careful to check the box I have to see that thing every time I boot. Arrrrghhh!
@Joe: RIGHT on. That’s been a problem even before Live Messenger, when “Windows Messenger” would load automatically, and not even show up in your application bar. It was just hidden, because they were trying to make it a default application.
@Mike: Advertising is hard to ignore, but when your sales guy barge into the room and demand that literally 20% of your horizontal space is taken up by Tabs by 3rd parties, you have to step back and ask that question that is so often overlooked: will our users be happy?
The last straw that made me dump Live Messenger and stop the Service was that for some reason, WLM began making hundred of mysterious I/O access per minute. Uninstalls and reinstalls had no effect. The drive activity got so heavy that it kept me awake at night!
This article is spot on in every way, IMO. Typical MS, find something that works, then bloat the hell out of it until everyone hates it.
this is the most biast rubish i have ever read!
if you learn how to actually use it, and if you actually have a brain, windows live messenger is extremely good
using apatch and plus, it is the best instant messenger out there.
facebook instant messenger?
so you can now be a retarded vampire, warewolf and have hundreds more emails sent to your inbox of people joining you to groups and asking to be “twat buddies”
go out instead of writing in your stupid blog
my windows live messenger uses almost no resouces, it is light weight and easy.
firefox uses alot more resouces, even by optimizing about:config settings.
@Bill: I’ve had that problem myself forever.
@nathix: “my windows live messenger uses almost no resouces, it is light weight and easy.”
I thought of two ways to reply to this. I couldn’t decide.
a) That’s because you must have the VIP Messenger for VIPs.
b) I’m pretty sure that’s what it says on the MS website. You aren’t an MS covert ops are you?
[...] Dear Microsoft: 7 Reasons Why Windows Live Messenger is Starting to Suck From Facebook Insight, a damning indictment of excess complexity and intrusive behaviour on the part of what ought to be one of the simplest apps Microsoft makes. (tags: review windows live_messenger im app) [...]
Um you can still send files… Microsoft pulled a dick move and hid it in the stuff at the top of the window.
MSN Messenger is shit. However I use it everyday. It is enhanced by Plus. But it still takes ages to load. My major problem with it is when you send an MP3 file (and it might not be a copyright song but a sample you created, etc) and when they click to open it, it deletes it. My understanding is that there is no way to hide a virus in an MP3 file, however Messenger is certain that it could be harmful and deletes it anyway.
A 3rd party client that can connect to Messenger and utilise its features like offline messaging would make a killing.
And yes, the Tabs are pointless but you have no choice but to load them with messenger, which takes time.
Nice article dude!..in much agreeance…hah
You know most of those annoyances can be disabled -.-
1) Tabs:
Okay this one is rather complicated so you might want to pay attention. Firstly, open up your MSN interface and navigate to the upside down triangle, expand it and select ‘options’
Now this is the tricky part, select ‘tabs’ from the left-hand column and then tick that nifty box that states ‘hide tabs’
Yeah, they are gone now, enjoy a cookie!
2) Pay-for-use Emoticons:
I don’t know anyone who uses them, but I have seen someone use the animated Display pictures, which I thought was rather neat, but I only wish I could make my own =/
3) The Customer Improvement Program:
‘I do not want to participate right now.’
4) Winks:
Navigate to options> Messages> Untick ‘Play winks automatically when they are received’ And when you do get a wink and it DOESN’T go off, tell them kindly to get their heads out of their asses.
5) Live Spaces:
I agree with you here, so just ignore it. By the way, you can hide that popup window at login by ticking the box at the bottom left corner~
6) Sharing Folders:
I really can’t say anything here, it works perfect for me. But I prefer to use the regular file sending program in MSN, I can see exactly when the transfer is done.
As for the onecare scanner? I haven’t even seen that yet (running current version, daily) And I do file transfer often. Mayhaps its your virus scanner thats getting rid of the files, i’ve had a number of friends complaining about their anti virus up and getting rid of files that they wanted. (Notes that you are using avast, I’ve gotten complaints from that before)
All in all, the topic was about why MSN would include these rather pointless features in the first place. And I do agree up to that point. But its time you took action and just get rid of all those features yourself (which Microsoft so gracefully put in options to do so!)
Add more functionality to your MSN through MSN Plus:
http://www.msgpluslive.net/ (I noticed you either didn’t have it or disabled the icon in the top tabs)
Forgot to add, if you have been any type of computer user for even a single year you come to understand that microsoft doesn’t exactly listen to its customers, more so, it ignores them. The most you can do is make the best out of it and tweak things till they work like you want them to (and trust me, you can with almost anything)
Google is a incredibly useful tool, if you have something you want changed, look it up and someone will have a guide for it~
I use a Mac, and Windows has this crappy, sub-par version of messenger out for Mac that I am forced to use to talk to my Live Messenger-using buddies. However, if you want to do anything other than just chat, it’s damn near impossible. The file sharing sucks, you can’t play games, and you can’t use the “drawing” feature.
I guess Microsoft thinks I’ll get fed up with not being able to have the full version of Live Messenger and will switch to a Windows based PC. Ha! Nice try guys…
dude just go over to mess.be and download the mess.be patch and get rid of all the crap in wlm.
wlm + mess.be patch = bowl full of win.
Is it just me or are we seeing a spike in Microsoft employees on any blog or forum that criticises them ? I suppose they are cheaper than programmers. “Vista is great, I haven’t had one problem with it” type of thing.
You overlooked the lowliest private in the Micro$oft Army of Features - THE AUDIBLE ADS.
Enough videos, enough talking ads, no more movie trailers…just give me an IM as part of your crappy OS (which would warrant an entire rant of it’s own) and we’ll call it even.
Hey Neil,
Great post and some interesting responses, some valid, some as if the posters have been on the Crazy Juice!
I used MSN for long enough, and your reasons why it sucks are valid one and all. I changed over to Yahoo IM and far prefer it (as a free, user-oriented product). For my business needs, I find that Jabber (http://jabber.org) is a great IM service. It’s still fun, yet it’s also extremely business-like.
There are some aspects of WIM that are useful - the cross-compatibility with Xbox Live, to find your friends easily when you first sign up, for example. Yet to me, these are few and far between.
It’ll be interesting to see what Bill has up his sleeve for Windows 7, as at the minute he seems to be having more problems than good news.
Cheers, look forward to more posts!
My biggest beef with MSN is that IT IS A TOOL THAT THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT USES TO SPY ON ITS CITIZENS! If you don’t believe me, try tracking outgoing packets through dhcp…you will see that they are routed through NSA proxy servers before they are sent to their destination.
Please SUPPORT net neutrality and PROTECT yourself from government hax0rs eom
AMEN.
My Facebook addiction replaced my reliance on MSN.
yeah wlm is totally overloaded….
but …. the “features” that cannot be disabled in the preferences (i.e. tabs can as well as the “windows live today”etc pop-up) can be disabled, I mean, you can customize your messenger the way you like, disable all buttons except the smiley-button in the conversation-windows if you want… and much more…
the solution’s name is: a-patch….
http://apatch.org/
After I found a-patch I like to use WLM very much because there is not a single stupid thing anymore (no links which want to sell me things nobody wants… no winks, no sharing folders etc….)
I hope you like this too
Thankfully, I didn’t have to suffer through this since I jumped directly from ICQ toTrillian and shortly afterwards, to GAIM and then Kopete on Linux.
Of course, I did still have to turn on “ignore remote fonts and colors” to avoid some of the braindead things.
I’m a mac user, and I completely agree with all of your complaints about MSN for windows, but Microsoft Messenger on the mac, has none of these issues, and still has a wider user base than iChat. So thanks, Microsoft!
MSN does suck. I don’t know too much about facebook messenger, it’s in the same boat as evil microsoft imho as of now, because of facebook’s personal information collecting thing, but… some people refuse to use anything else, which makes switching messengers a huge hassle. that’s why I recommend everyone gets Trillian Astra. XD trillian = firefox of the IM world.
o with sending a file just click sharing folders and click send file or photo
You guys should try Mercury, a Java based messenger. Its sooo cool!
hahaha
i hate Windows Live messanger….the only reason i use it is because i have friends who are not up to date with a facebook or yahoo chat. Good rant….exactly how i feel!
Meh, you get what you pay for.
“Fast forward a few years or ten, and we’re all using Microsoft’s latest incarnation: Windows Live Messenger.” What are you, high? I’ve NEVER used Messenger, partly due to the problems you redundantly list. Use a lightweight, multi-client program like Pidgin.
Also, Neil was FIRST! …to comment on his own blog entry: FAIL.
Trillian FTW!
msn mess is a horrid mess especially with vista spent 34890234786-23497869280762 hours to sign in and gave up used to have it with xp by the way vista is a nightmare also
Many of these problems can be disabled or all together eliminated with a combination of Messenger Plus, apatch and Messenger Discovery.
1. Tabs can be disabled in options.
2. Nobody (or very few people) actually buys emotes…
3. Can be disabled.
4. Can be disabled from automatically playing (as someone else said)
5. You don’t need to use it. In fact, not once have I had to deal with the Live Spaces option.
6. Don’t need to be used. Sharing folders was a stupid idea in the first place due to WLM’s horrible transfer speeds anyway.
OneCare does not come with WLM (well, I don’t know if it does now - I’m still using 8.1 because I hate the Vista theme of 9+).
In the end I just cracked with the amount of crap that was put into MSN Messenger with each release. It felt bloated and clumsy and I had no control over the look and feel unless I patched it. This sometimes caused instability, and it didn’t change everything I wanted to change anyway. So I moved over to aMSN which is a great alternative with many, many options. There’s also plugins and skins.
all i really hear is wah wah wahhhh just try qnext. u can message all ur friend on all the major servers (gmail/gtalk,msn, yahoo plus more), basic emotes, no winks( i dont think so atleast) and its realtively quick 2 boot up (except 4 the connecting)
best part about it is is u can sign on 2 all of ur messaging things at 1 time.
In case anyone reads this, and are having the same thoughts, you can always patch messenger with the mess patch from http://patch.mess.be/ .
This allows you to turn off most annoying features. (I don’t work for mess.be but they have made a great tool to turn a bad IM into a good one.)