10 years ago today, MSN Messenger v1.0 was released to the world and users all around the world began downloading it via their 28.8/56.6k dial-up modems. :p.

Over the past few weeks we received an overwhelming number of fascinating stories from all of you on topics ranging from “How to propose using Messenger” to “How to use Messenger as a security camera”, all of which reminds us about why we love working on this product.

Windows Live Messenger is where it is today because of YOU, our users.  We couldn’t have done it without you and in return, we thought about hosting a party, but with 330 million of you to invite, I couldn’t convince any of the team members to hold it at their place. :)  Instead, you’ll have to settle for the next best thing… a homemade celebration video (nicely pasted to the left for your viewing pleasure).

Hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.  Thank you for all your support over the past 10 years, and here’s to another 10! :)

After you’ve checked out the video, here are some things you can do to celebrate Messenger’s 10th anniversary with us:

• Visit our Messenger anniversary celebration site in the US or in the UK and download a special anniversary gift pack with free themes and emoticons.
• Send a Happy Anniversary IM to at least 10 of your friends and let them guess whose anniversary you’re celebrating (you can use a 10 Year Anniversary emoticon to make it a bit easier for them) 

Fun Fact – did you know that…

Messenger users come back to log-in to Windows Live Messenger on average 3 times a day. That is about as often as the average person would sit down to have a meal.

And when they log-in they send a *LOT* of messages to their friends and family! Let’s come back to our space travel example from yesterday:

People are trying to estimate how many stars we have in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The current estimate is approx 300 billion. For Messenger we don’t have to estimate, we have the numbers – could you have imagined that the average 9.4 billion messages that are sent per day add up to about 290 billion messages every month, which pretty much equals the estimated number of stars in our galaxy?!

Looking back to the early days of Windows Live Messenger – here is how one of our users remembers these days:

 Steve (USA): Early Days Experiences

I remember first using MSN Messenger back when I signed up for the MSN dial-up internet service in 1999.  At that time, I only had one friend who used MSN Messenger, and we would chat on the computer from time to time.

Shortly thereafter, as we got older and entered high school, so many more of my friends started signing up for Hotmail and MSN Messenger.

 One of my fondest memories is in my eighth grade year, when my friends had a study hall in the computer lab for the last period of the day.  We'd all get on MSN Messenger and have group chats.  Since at that time there was a limit as to how many people could be in one chat (I'm not sure if there still is or not), it was always a race to join the chat, and almost a privilege to be included in the conversation.

Chatting with each other while we all had headphones on listening to music, sharing links and transferring songs back and forth really made that study hall a blast.

Steve, USA

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY EVERYBODY!!!!