Meet members of the Windows Live Messenger team (original) (raw)
12 more days until the big day – Messenger’s 10th Anniversary!
Messenger Fun Facts:
The **typing indicator (
)**seems trivial today, but actually it was a tricky problem back in the early days – how could you show that someone was entering a message without showing every single character (and their typos). The Messenger team invented the typing indicator for that purpose, which today is used by every chat client. The nudge was introduced with MSN Messenger 7.0 on April 7th 2005. Since then it is even easier to get attention from your favorite chat partner – even if they might not always appreciate your nudges! 😉
I didn’t even know that the Messenger team invented the “typing indicator” until today, but I don’t know what I’d do without it! 🙂
Before I share today’s user submitted story, I wanted to quickly introduce you to the Messenger program management team. This team, led by Steven, works with several other teams such as design, usability, development , testing, etc to help bring Windows Live Messenger to your computer. They have a challenging but rewarding job. Look for posts from them in the future! Special thanks to Sameer for putting this post together.
Meet the Messenger Client PM team
 Steven |
Steven is from the San Francisco Bay Area. He has led the Messenger team for the past 2 years. Having a background in anthropology, he loves travelling, learning about other cultures and spending time with his 5 year old daughter. |
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 Colin |
Colin is from East St. Louis, which hosts the world’s second tallest water fountain. He just found this out. He joined the Messenger team this year and has been at Microsoft for over 8 years. He has a great voice and he loves to sing. |
 Brian |
Brian has lived in Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii before moving to Washington. An avid reader of fiction, Brian has been on the team for the past 3 years and has been at Microsoft for over 9 years. He is starting grad school this fall to study Theology. |
 Alton |
Alton is from Hong Kong and Vancouver, Canada. He has a 125 gallon fish tank. He has worked on the Messenger team for 2 years and has been at Microsoft for 9 years. He is fascinated by the evolving cultures of social networks online. |
 Jake |
Jake is a local boy… born, raised and fed on the eastside of Seattle. He has worked on the Messenger team for 2 years and at Microsoft for 6 years. Jake’s has a degree in business and long experience teaching and counseling teenagers. He is a fierce basketball player and athlete, but his greatest accomplishment is when he overachieved by marrying Heather, who is way out of his league. |
 Tolga |
Tolga is from Istanbul. He packed his bags and moved to Redmond 2 years ago and has been working on Messenger since then. Between Turkey and the US, he has been at Microsoft for 5 years. He loves sci-fi and electronic hacking projects. |
 Sameer |
Sameer is from Mumbai and he still prefers the old name Bombay. He loves geocaching and has the distinction of hiding one of the first 20 geocaches in India. He went back to school to study human-computer interaction before joining Microsoft a year ago, and has been working on the Messenger team since then. He likes to sail, but he has yet to tame the waters of Lake Washington in Seattle. He loves travelling and learning about other cultures. He’s also a co-owner of this blog. 🙂 |
Now for today’s user story, in his own words…
Lenin (Ecuador): “Loving the Sound of new messages coming in”
Hi, this is Lenin, writing from Cuenca, Ecuador.
Technology has been one of my passions for my whole life and since Internet appeared I haven’t gone away from my computer. I spent hours in the IRC channels until someone had the genial idea of creating MSN Messenger (in those faraway times).
It was the best thing that could have happened to chats, in all chats and IRCs, people were typing: “Use the Messenger", and everyone was speaking of its big usefulness. After spending a week chatting with someone, it was: "Give me your ‘Hotmail’ so I can add you to mess".
And since that era, 1999, in all the cybercafés it was heard the nice wav sound: "new message" at every moment. Everyone was using it, times changed, years passed, there were new versions released with new features and in every computer it was essential to have Messenger.
And now, 10 years after, being called Windows Live Messenger and having the chance to change the sound for new messages or nudges, but I don’t do it because I’m used to that "toorooroon", it is part of my life. All my contacts are there, I’ve changed my Passport something like 5 times, but my buddies remain, all my life is there.
Greets…! 😉
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Thanks for that submission Lenin! (BTW, anyone know when the sound for incoming messages was first introduced? What’s your guess?)
-Windows Live Messenger Team