Cristine Li

Microsoft currently announced that it will shut down its Windows Live Messenger (MSN) in early 2013 except mainland of China. MSN was the most popular social media in the history of Instant Messaging (IM) market that it owned more than 60% of global IM market. However, the amount of active users of MSN has dropped steadily these years with only 100 million for 2012, which was same as the figure in 2003.

MSN just published three new versions for MSN since 2005, which was complainted that they did not actually have any differences. While Facebook, Twitter enter the IM market, progressive upgrade for the services and products is the strength for the company, but Microsoft did not do it. By following up users’ satisfaction, companies can know how the customers rate their services and products, and thus they can change to meet the requirements. As the buyer power is high in the IM market and technology changes quickly, Microsoft should keep changing its strategy and upgrading its products. Simply ignore users’ satisfaction will eventually lead to fail.  Even Microsoft keeps MSN in mainland of China, if it do not do some change, it will easily lose this last market of MSN because Chinese IM company Tencent is more popular than MSN these years.

Reply for Cecilia Wu’s blog post: When the legend becomes history – Skype to globally replace MSN.

Original Sources: Article 1 , Article 2, Article 3, Article 4