Craig Atkinson » MSN Messenger frustrations

3/23/2005

MSN Messenger frustrations

Filed under: General — Craig @ 12:10 pm

For the past year, I’ve been hitting the 150 person limit on MSN Messenger. It’s really frustrating to a user to have to delete people from your list, when you want to add new people. A large majority of the people on my contact list are in other countries, so I can’t always be online at the same time as them. I cringe to think of the people I’ve had to delete that I never got to talk to about some future project that could have been possible. It’s the kind of frustration that causes you to want to go out and find an alternative messaging protocol, however it’s not a practical solution! It happened to me once that I advertised in my name for contacts in a certain part of the world, and somebody who I had deleted previously messaged me back with some information that was very critical.

What I propose Microsoft does to fix this problem:

Offer a premium MSN Messenger subscription that is not too expensive. Say $25 a year. For the ability to scale up to 2500 contacts. That’s the equivalent of only one penny per year per contact. They are already giving away Messenger for free. Why not offer value added additions for increased revenue? Another thing is to add upgrade packs. $10 or $15 for an extra 1000 contacts. $25-50 for 5000-10000 contacts.

The world doesn’t operate in 150 person networks. It’s ridiculous to limit something as potentially world-changing as instant messaging to a set number of people and not offer any options. Just give me an option!

5 Comments

Wow, 2500, that’s a lot, we may have some infrastructure problems with that. For example, log-in to a Passport with only a few contacts, then one with it filled up, the performance is much slower [a constant balancing act]. Additionally, what if you pay for the service for one year and then stop, do we start deleting your contacts? Ouch! The limit is now 300 or double, is that enough? What about running Trillian [or other third-party client] and using another Passport for some projects? If these projects are part of a corporation, what about deploying Microsoft Live Communication Server and running your own system [SIP or Exchange]? I’ll be sure to pass your feedback on to the team, we appreciate it.

@Matthew
Microsoft MVP, MSN – More Useful Everyday

Comment by Matthew Weyer — 3/24/2005 @ 1:15 pm
update your blog craigy !

Comment by Vera — 3/31/2005 @ 12:02 pm
I agree Craig, its very frustrating at times. When I reach my limit, I go through my list and see who I haven’t talked to in a while and delete 10-20 at a time…but its usually just a matter of time before it gets to the limit again. Especially going to Croatia and getting more contacts, I’m sure I’ll have to delete a lot of people that I don’t want to. Other than that, I guess the only other option is to get another MSN ID (which I’ve tried but isn’t very convenient) or switch to another messenging client like ICQ or Yahoo which don’t have limits that I’m aware of. Of course, getting your whole network of contacts to switch is not very convenient either. If the other messenging clients can allow more contacts, I don’t see why MSN shouldn’t. I guess we’ll just have to wait for Google messenger

Or another solution is to just have less friends…you’re too popular Craig…haha

Comment by Matt — 4/3/2005 @ 4:30 pm
There are little programs/hacks that will allow you running two MSN Messengers at once. You could have two passport accounts and be able to access both of your lists at the same time.

Comment by moltar — 4/10/2005 @ 3:25 pm
Another thing about MSN that I hate is that if you want to change your email, you can’t just change it. You gotta back up all your contacts, then change the email. Approve it. And import all your contacts back. And after importing them, it will ask for person’s authorization again.

Comment by moltar — 4/10/2005 @ 3:28 pm

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