Do MSN Emails Still Exist?
MSN was a collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft, which launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. It is a web portal and online service provider that offers news, weather, sports, money, entertainment, and more.
MSN started out as a closed, dial-up network, much like CompuServe or Prodigy at the time. It aimed to make it as easy as possible for people to use the Internet, even those who didn’t have a computer or an internet connection.
However, as the Internet grew in popularity, MSN’s business model changed. It was redesigned in 1999 and 2000 to focus on Web-based activities, like shopping and investing, which would make it more attractive to advertisers.
At the same time, MSN began to alienate its content partners because of the shift from closed to open-access networks. Many of these partners had been spending millions of dollars to develop information and other products for MSN, only to find that the changes were too big to accommodate their current businesses.
This forced them to go back to the drawing board and develop new products for the new service. As a result, MSN began losing ground in the market to AOL.
Despite this, MSN’s subscription base remained fairly steady at around 3 million users, placing it in the same category as AOL and Comcast at the end of 1995. The company was hoping to increase its subscriber count by offering free email, and in January 1998 it acquired Hotmail, a free e-mail service with ten million subscribers, which helped boost MSN’s user numbers.
The acquisition also made MSN a stronger competitor to AOL, and Microsoft was able to bolster its position by aggressively promoting the service with television commercials and other marketing tactics. It rolled out new e-mail features and redesigned its website.
By 2001, MSN was number two in the online services world, behind AOL, but it still had a lot of room for growth. The company had to fight off a host of competitors, including Google and Yahoo!, as well as the rise of social media.
In 2005 and 2006, MSN rebranded some of its services under the Windows Live brand name, which included Windows Live Hotmail (previously Windows Mail), and Windows Live Messenger. This move was part of a Microsoft strategy to overhaul its online software and services in the face of increasing competition from rivals such as Google and Yahoo!
When MSN first launched in 1995, it was a private, dial-up network that offered access to local content. It was designed to compete with America Online and CompuServe, who had both begun offering Internet access by that point.
MSN’s early success was based on the fact that it had one of the most innovative names in the industry. As a result, many users assumed that the service would be a great success.
But it wasn’t until the advent of smartphones that MSN’s fortunes began to dwindle. Smartphones allowed people to chat in real-time, a feature that MSN’s traditional e-mail service could not compete with.