M$N chat ploy

some PR man earned his keep this week

[dcheney]

The news today is full of reports of how M$N is closing down its free and anonymous chats "for the good of the community".

Ok, I'm a little cynical when it comes to M$, but it sure sounds like they are simply closing down the free ones to encourage more people to join the paid ones. (Yes, the paid ones will remain available :-)

Sounds like they are closing them down purely for the good of their bottom line.

[Macguru]

;) [webmasterworld.com...] ;)

[dcheney]

Oops - nevermind :-)

[chiyo]

have some sympathy with that view. Mainstream broadcast media are simply reporting that this is a major move to cut down on pederast activity. Im not going to deny MS that reason - Im sure that it was an important factor. But to me it looks many other factors are involved, and yes many are financial. It does take effort and money to moderate any chat room.

Pederasts and young on line chatters will just shift to other networks, and maybe ones with even less control. How is that going to help? After all MSN is a johnnie-come-lately to the online chat area - a relic of the portal wars going head to head with yahoo. IRC still exists im sure, and pretty sure it has spiffy icon based interfaces now too.

If the predator reason was the only one, did MSN look into other options such as "kid only" zones and chat rooms with verifable registration info (dosent yahoo have something like this) and did they look at other reasons other than just closing down what seem to be their smaller markets. Japan is still going, but from what i hear, this is a major trouble spot for online predators.

So happy to accept that msn can legitimately take the high ground, but not at all happy to accept that it was the only, and even major reason for the decision to restructure these services.