Australia’s most popular instant messaging service, Windows Live Messenger, celebrates a decade at the top.
windowslive.com.au
Sydney, Australia, Wednesday 22 July 2009: An average of 4.5 million Australian unique browsers each month* make it Australia's favourite instant messaging service and Windows Live Messenger has even more reason to celebrate this Wednesday 22 July 2009 when it officially reaches its 10th anniversary milestone.
A communication phenomenon since its inception a decade ago, Windows Live Messenger reaches a global audience of more than 330 million people across 59 countries in 36 languages. Australians alone spend a combined total of over 9 million hours each month† communicating via Messenger, sending an average of 151 million messages per day or more than 55 billion messages per year*.
Windows Live Messenger is also the platform responsible a whole new series of modern acronyms, helping millions of Australians to regularly LOL or even ROTFL. They have told each other they are AFK ATM, they will TTYL and will BRB. OMG!**
Commenting on the 10th anniversary milestone, Senior Product Manager for Windows Live, Raphael Aquino-Jose, said; "Windows Live Messenger has continually evolved since its launch in 1999 to become an even more fun, engaging and useful communication tool.
"Developments in technology have increased our need and expectation for efficient and easy communication and the beauty of Messenger is it allows people to connect and share emotion, personality and humour for free across the world.
"Over the past ten years, Messenger has also helped Australians work more efficiently in the office, with instant messenger being quicker than an email, and in some cases, cheaper than the phone," Mr Aquino-Jose concluded.
In February 2009, significant changes were made to the Windows Live suite of products, including Messenger, allowing the 7.5 million Australians who use a Windows Live ID to stay better connected than ever before. These changes included the consolidation of email, instant messaging, photo and video sharing, and a live news feed from popular social networking sites all accessible via Windows Live.
Additional Windows Live Messenger trivia:
- The 9.4 billion messages sent each day around the world equates to the estimated number of stars in our galaxy.‡
- If Windows Live Messenger were a country, it would have the third largest population in the world (behind China and India and before the US).
- The more than 55 billion messages sent in Australia each year are more than the annual amount of mail delivered by Australia Post (5.61bn). *
- In Australia, the average age of people who use Windows Live Messenger is 30 and Australians have an average of 109 Windows Live Messenger contacts each.*
- There are approximately 40 million conversations taking place on Windows Live Messenger at any one given time around the world.
- MSN Messenger 1.0 launched in 1999 in four languages: English, French, German and Japanese.
- In its first five months, MSN Messenger members swelled to 4.5 million active accounts speaking in 26 languages.
- MSN Messenger was renamed Windows Live Messenger on 20 June, 2006.
- Six in 10 of the world’s instant messaging users choose Windows Live Messenger.
-ENDS-
** Windows Live Messenger Acronyms:
LOL – Laugh out loud
ROTFL – Roll on the floor laughing
AFK – Away from keyboard
ATM – At the moment
TTYL – Talk to you later
BRB – Be right Back
OMG – Oh my God
Source:
* Internal ninemsn data
†Neilsen NetView
‡ Microsoft internal analysis, April 2009
††(comscore, April 2009)
