We’ve received confirmation that Microsoft is handing over the reins to its MSN Groups property to the social network Multiply. Microsoft is planning to release a new service called Windows Live Groups in November, and apparently doesn’t want to compete with itself. Oddly enough, Microsoft has chosen not to allow groups to transition between the two services, and instead is going to offer a migration tool that will allow users to take groups over to Multiply, which currently bills itself as the world’s 8th largest social network.
The rumor was originally reported earlier today after a series of emails were posted to a MSN Discussion newsgroup, and has since been confirmed by both Multiply and Microsoft through a blog post.
Here’s Microsoft’s explanation for the shutdown:
The natural question to ask in this situation is why we are closing MSN Groups. It is our goal to provide our customers with the most current and user friendly technology available today. We made the difficult decision to close the MSN Groups service as part of an overall investment in updating and re-aligning our online services with Windows Live. In the long term we believe that closing the service is the best way to continue to offer innovative, best of breed services that help you stay in touch with the people you care about. It’s very important to us that you keep the data you created using MSN Groups and that is why we have partnered with Multiply, so you can keep your group going into the future despite the closure of MSN Groups.
The Microsoft post also states that users will have until February 21, 2009 to migrate their groups over to Multiply, after which point the site will cease to exist.
This just seems weird – why would Microsoft abandon a sizable (but dwindling) chunk of users to an entirely unrelated social network? It’s nice that they aren’t leaving their users out in the cold, but why not just cut off new signups to MSN Groups and allow the legacy users to continue on in peace? Microsoft may appear to have made the gesture in good faith, but it’s likely that the company is hoping users will scoff at the idea of having to migrate, and just sign up on the new Live service when it launches.
Whatever Microsoft’s intentions, Multiply is sure to be happy with the deal, as it has just been handed millions of new users (we’re trying to contact Microsoft for the exact number).
Multiply if it wasn’t for tech crunch i wouldn’t know who they were.
I remember having signed up for a Multiply account back in 2003. It was – surprisingly – quite good.
I love techcrunch !!
Webware has a post saying that Microsoft is releasing Windows Live Groups in Nov. http://news.cne...tag=mncol;title
Seems more likely to me that they’d scoff at the idea and move their group over to Google groups or similar… Don’t think they’ll have much brand loyalty after this
If they are starting “Windows Live Groups” in November, why wouldn’t they just migrate users from MSN Groups to Windows live Groups?
Just like going from MSN Messenger to Windows Live Messenger isn’t it?
Besides, do consumers even differentiate between MSN and Windows Live anyway? If most people are like me … It’s all just “Microsoft”.
I think people understand that MSN is just a portal page and nothing more at this point. Everything else (except for that awful Soapbox) is using “Live” as the branding and with “Live” being used in the name of new programming technologies (Like Live Mesh) “Live” is finally getting to where it should have been back in ‘06/’07.
In a year or so don’t be surprised if the last remnants of MSN are gone altogether.
What they need for msn is a oh crap my boss is coming hot key to hide your msn from view and show your work screen.
The reason is very simple but not obvious unless you are familiar with MSN groups. i am. they come with a lots and lots of baggage. there is a lot of sensitive material Microsoft is taking the opportunity to get rid of from (porn, illegal stuff, extremist stuff and lots of etc`s) and because the model of Live Groups is very different. you don`t want that kind of material ported right away and you don`t want spam groups to also be ported to Live Groups. The ultimate reason is because live groups will be connected to messenger and to spaces and will share data around. something easy to confirm in Liveside.net or if you ask the right people in Windows Live if you are hesitant to believe it.
Good Call from MS on this. i am actually surprised they had not done it sooner. but they needed a good excuse and someone bulletproof to bite that bullet. i would have cut off MSN groups at least a year or so ago. but i guess they didn`t wanted to deal with the controversy either.
Multiply is a great choice too. they have a MSN feel (starting with the logo) and their core audience is in Asia. they are like friendster in that regard. big in asia. close to unknown in North America (can/usa/mex). porting the stuff over there does not represent a problem to them
“Microsoft may appear to have made the gesture in good faith, but it’s likely that the company is hoping users will scoff at the idea of having to migrate, and just sign up on the new Live service when it launches.”
heh. absolutely not. if you only knew.
Actually, they’d already moved a lot of groups that were marked 18+ over to World Groups a few years ago (2005?). As far as I know, they weren’t supposed to have anymore groups that were considered 18+ after that.
And I do agree with you. This is a good move on MSN’s part, mostly because Groups has been the red-haired stepchild of the Microsoft empire, especially lately. The space allowed you (unless you’re an MSN subscriber) is abysmal, the HTML coding is very limited… I’ll be glad to move my groups.
Where I move them to is yet to be seen…
“supposed” and not happing are two different things..
the details are too many to count. but yes. MSN groups has always been the stepchild. one of the things you are not able to see is that you are only thinking of the groups in english speaking groups. i am saying in general. 
Tikatu, there are a lot of other online group services to take a look at. My company’s product, Convos, is a more robust service like Yahoo. Compared to MSN groups, i’m not sure if you’re looking for all of those features outside of a message board and storage space.
http://www.convos.com
@Avatar – You’re right. I was only thinking about the English speaking countries.
@JP – I took a look at Convos, and poked around in the Help Center a little. I wish I could see more of what’s offered. Can you code the pages in HTML? I like that feature of MSN groups (even if the HTML is limited) because then I can keep copies of the pages in case something happens.
Tikatu,
You may want to check out BigOrb.com. It’s a brand new site, so there aren’t many examples yet, but you should get the idea. Unfortunately there’s no HTML support at this time, but that may change in the near future.
http://www.bigorb.com
They’re losing to Google I think…
http://www.ShawnDrewry.com
Google sells ads – that’s all their good at doing. The rest of the offerings are always subpar and in neverending beta. In other words, you can’t trust your data with them.
maybe they may want to focus on facebk social groups instead of there own. this says alot about the quality and value msn places on msngroups members. who’s next geocities?
MicroLocator.com – little things count.
Microsoft is struggling!
You own a Mac and have a Gmail account, don’t you?
Yes, you are right. I use mac and linux, and usually use Gmail and Gtalk.
And there’s a news tells that Microsoft will start its “Black Screen Project” to anti pirated XPs in mainland China, I think many pirated XP users will choose mac instead.
I don’t think people will move to Mac that just because they can’t pirate XP. If they have to buy something, buying Windows (even with a new computer) is still WAY cheaper than getting a Mac. Most people will stick with a PC running Windows.
Letting the legacy groups continue would be nice. Being an assistant manager at the “blog” (it’s a group, not a blog) mentioned above, *not* having to deal with the panic would be a godsend.
To let the legacy groups continue would involve an investment from Microsoft to fix those things that are broken and maintain the Groups, if nothing else. Unfortunately, it seems they’re not willing to do even that much.
OK so I have A Windows Live ID which logs me into my MSN Groups so all my groups and my Live ID are going to go Poof ????? I’ve always hated MSN but I have a lot of friends there (amazing what you will put up with for your friend’s isn’t it?) and I’ve had to create several accounts because of crashes or my Bad memory with pass word (I Despise Net Passport) so is MSN going to Fix that Passport s…..(expleative here) ????? if not I think I might use it as an excuse to leave all my groups … incidentially Windows Live really sucks too because I have the blasted ID set up my Blog and have never been let back into since… so much for my pictures and poetry uploaded there …back then I believed I’d be in and out so once I uploaded I deleted my PC copies to make room …my bad lost forever in the net…
have you never heard of password recovery?
A couple of weeks ago, I had the misfortune of trying to add myself to an MSN group and it was an ordeal. The damn thing kept failing. Microsoft can’t even make a basic web app work.
Just one more sign the wheels are loosening
Have just come accross this message board and some interesting reading. I have run my own MSN group for some considerable time. Yes it has its flaws, but most are down to MSN not keeping the service updated..there have been rumours since the World Groups fiasco a couple of years back. However, there is NO similar service on the net and the few who have seen snapshots of Multiply have been left disappointed. Windows Live Groups fares even worse with those who have seen it. Those of us who have stuck with MSN Groups through the good times and bad will be lost to MSN forever! We put an aweful lot of hard work into the groups and feel badly let down by MSN. Some will migrate their groups, if only to try out, but the feeling is they will be really disappointed to find the style and ease of use that they were used to, has all but disappeared into another Facebook/Bebo/Google Groups (how bad is that?) etc etc.
You see, people miss the point about MSN Groups…we are NOT social networking sites, not in the sense of the ones just mentioned anyway, we are more than that and I for one am gutted at there demise…and anything that can be transferred from Microsoft..will be, as the company has lost its way and its ethos of listening to its customers!
“We are not social networking sites, not in the sense of the ones just mentioned…”
I agree with this. And that’s why I’m thinking about getting my own domain and webspace (even though it’d be an extremely steep learining curve for me).
With every ounce of devotion, and every penny that has been invested in creating and maintaining a much needed support group, 95% of whom are permanently disabled (and about 2% are bedridden), we abhor this closing/transferring which is not possible, to any other service. The functionality, appearance and capabilities of our group design cannot be duplicated on any other service. There will be thousands of lost individuals who depend on the information and support provided by the valuable, properly functioning groups that are managed by talented and caring individuals. Unfortunately the appearance of a message board is much more important than anyone bothers to consider when they offer a message board service. I, for one, remember before the “Internet” as you know it, was a basic BBS, bulletin board service, I hosted one from my home, “The Traveler’s Inn”. That was back when one still booted one’s computer from a cassette tape and connected to the BBS service via a phone line, read the messages posted much like this forum here, nothing much to look at, just a list of writing, and then one could type in one’s note if one had anything to say. The only place to look at anything other than words on a board was the entry page. Much like this here, but of course here we can be intrigued at the advertisements, right! Wow, such fantastic design elements, very calming, relaxing and inviting and really has great aesthetic appeal that is pertinent to the issue (not). And let’s not forget and highly praise the ever annoying pop-up plug-in advertisements that tick a person off to no end because heaven forbid the mouse rolled on the mouse pad as I lay here typing in bed (haven’t been out of bed since 2006).
When I read posts on a forum that is as boring and cold as this one for example, I am left with a feeling of having a toe tag labeled Jane Doe. I desire a more personal family type setting for a support group where the managers and members know my name and about my biological family. Where we are a group of persons who all have something in common. When I go to a board I want to see that displayed as pertinent to the issues discussed. Not just a list of black and white comments in a string that are unrelated leaving me feeling like I am sitting in a morgue.
MSN groups has been a savior for hundreds and thousands of people and it’s a shame to see that lost. Unfortunately far too many have messed that up with their garbage and have taken advantage of the services provided for well-meaning people. Sorry, but I am upset to see that all the efforts of so many talented people get tossed into the garbage. I went to Multiply, I guess I can just post pictures of my cat and post some head-banging music files and leave behind a long string of expletives. There, my job is done. There is no way that Multiply can adequately house my information in the setting I have designed on MSN groups, not without paying someone to do it. I guess on my disability income since I have been bedridden for over 10 years and never got the chance to work as I had planned to do with my life when I was in college, I can really afford that. So I am stuck with what they allow me and that should take care of anyone considering suicide because for years they have been suffering from excrutiating pain that is not being treated because the general view of society doesn’t believe there are invisible illnesses. If it left me feeling empty when I joined just for the heck of it to see what I could do with it, why wouldn’t everyone else that is feeling depressed. How about those that are considering suicide? And how about letting everyone on the web join your group because you want to be listed to reach out to people who are in need but that leaves you no control to who gets in because if you are private you can’t be listed and my husband and kids aren’t suffering from a chronic illness and if I am private they would be the only ones to know about my group. Duh! How would I know who to invite, people in need don’t often walk up to me on the street asking me if I have a group and give me their email address and say, “Please invite me.” So why do we need support groups to help them cope anyway? Aren’t they just a waste to society anyway? And why should we house the information in a pleasing format because there is no real tangible evidence that it helps with mood.
I am so tired of people knocking MSN groups when they have never invested anything to building one and mantaining it. I have not found a better one than MSN that provides exactly what I need. I have been to ones that have groups, they all have sucked in my opinion. I want a discussion board, many as a mater of fact. I want a chat room, several at least, and they must be secure. I want a guestbook that I maintain control over what posts are approved. I want control over who becomes a member and who I can gag or ban. I want a setting that each forum looks exactly like the topic of the forum. I want my Recipe Board to look like a Recipe Box in a kichen, and my Medical Information Library to look like a Library. I don’t want every page to be as dull and bland as this black and white as this. I don’t want each and every one of my posts to look exactly the same. I talk about different things each time, so do my members. Our moods change with our posts, so should our posts change. I certainly wouldn’t decorate a sympathy post with Congratulations graphics and I want to decorate my posts. It conveys messages, it shows you care and take the time to care. I want to be human, not some piece of machinery. That’s why MSN is far preferable than any other boards or forums I have found for a support group. If all you want is a place to show off your pictures and play your MP3’s, if you just want a place where people can just gab about whatever they want, if you want a place that is just for average Joe to hang out and you don’t care about what they have in common with your purpose, either go to the town bar or go with Multiply I guess.
Every service, no matter what it is has glitches, guess what, it’s a fact of life folks. Start judging yourself about how you think of yourself as better than everyone. We are all equal, or have you forgotton that.
So for the 23,360 hours invested in my group this last year, we tearfully say goodbye to all that is lost. None of us have the time to rebuild what we have done. There will not be any smooth migration, that is not something that was considered. The formats are not the same, they’re not compatible. The money I have invested is lost. The people to whom I have become friends and mentor will again be left without support, heart and soul flailing in a sea of emotions far too difficult to endure alone. I fear the repercussions.
I just wanted to say God bless you dear. I have a soap making group on mSN msn.groups/soapaholicssoapmaking group or something like that. *grin* That little invite button hasn’t worked in a long time so I have been stuck with cut and paste. LOL I really have not memorized my addy. I have met my dearest friends there. My group is not much but, I decided to get it going a couple of weeks ago and now I hear this. This is sad and depressing. Please feel free if you are feeling lonesome. Many of us have fibro myalgia and we totally understand. I’m not sure if I’m going to migrate over. I opened an account late last night withMultiply. I was really tired lol I think I named it SOAP.multiply . what ever it is *Grin* I hope you find a way to recover all your hard work. Like I said we’d love to meet you. Stop by and post anytime before it dies. hugs,
Noelle
Dear Sister
I have run an MSN group, for coming up 5 years. I do understand the hours and hours spend making it an enjoyable experience for our members. My is a group to offer others a safe place of peace and love for my Christian Faith.
When I read your posting, many of your comments struck home. I am very sad this morning by the decision of MSN to close the group. I wish I had the technical ability to start our own service for those in need. Please know I am thinking and praying for you Analiase. Than you again for touching my heart.
God Bless
Daneve
congrats to Peter and staff at Multipy. I am a by fan of everything they have done.
I true hope that after this deal, the ranking of multiply will improve too, but I don’t think MS is struggling, they are upto something big for sure …
on se sent à l’aise dans les groups msn,et le fonctionnement nous conviens , pas intéresseé à être obliger de tout refaire ailleur,et perdre ce qu’on as ,ce qui est une job de Titan et de toute façon ce ne serait plus les mêmes fonctionalitées,et les groups msn sont loin de tous,placer sur leurs groups des choses illégal ou illicites,loin de là, Kaezea
Yeah i’m tried switching my MSN Group to Multiply, and it’s not working. For some reason it keeps saying that the e-mail and password doesn’t match, and I KNOW for a fact that it does because im signing into my hotmail just fine. Fucking Microsoft, why can’t you just leave shit alone.
The migration tool is already available? Hm. The way the article was worded, I thought it would be in the near future.
The migtaion tool is not available yet. They are asking you to wait to move your group until the migation tool is ready. It will move all your pages and posts for you. You just have to wait.
i am glad msn is upgrading or changing i had to move my entire magazine and club from msn to microsoft, who offer free web page and building as well as easy to use business software all for free. i can reccommend it to everyone you can move entire sites at one go. i dont think micro soft have any drawbacks and the advanced information and help sites were so easy even a complete newbie like me now gets 100’s of hits a day with no additional advertisement. have a look on my pages see the difference to the old msn place and join the revolution. http://www.knit...andnatter.co.uk i even managed to upload advertisements, associates and have over 100 free mail spaces incase i want to expand.
goodbye to msn and hello microsoft home office.
http://www.knit...andnatter.co.uk
Kat,
don’t bother trying to migrate your group yet, the functionality is not yet fully active and won’t be for probably another week or so according to MSN.
As for all those who think it’s a good idea and don’t understand why 100’s of users are complaining (and no, I’ve just come from the Community Feedback section at MSN and that figure is not an exageration) I think you’re missing the point. The site being suggested by MSN is not a viable alternative to Groups for most users because it simply doesn’t offer the functions users have on the current system.
I’ve looked at many myself and I agree with Analiese, they simply can’t offer the same style of group that’s available at the moment as they’ll all basically carbon copies with pages that all look the same. From the comments I’ve been reading at MSN it seems most users will simply quit, leaving those, like Analiese’s members, without the support they so desperately need.
Another thing I think MSN has forgotten in all this is all those users who currently pay a fee for the storage on their groups. I’m not sure they’ve taken into account how much money they’ll lose when all those users cancel their subscriptions.
I’m one of those who have paid for the extra storage. So my groups have to go by sometime in December, because that’s when the storage will run out.
i’ve been a multiply user, and i’ve personally run a group in multiply. there are trade-offs for everything. the biggest one being you can’t just send an email to everyone else in the group FROM your email. second is there won’t be a common area to just upload and share files. if you can live with those two points, then you’ll love multiply because hands down it does every other thing better than a traditional groups site.
Even design?
My groups has a custom-designed homepage, with custom buttons to access the other pages on the site. Once a month, I load up a new picture from the photo albums and add a member-created caption to it. Will I still be able to do this? Because I sure don’t see that happening from the examples I’ve viewed.
What a loss I love MSN groups.
My msn group was created 7/30/2000
During the years many things have been taken away. I want a place where I can use html and javascripting to teach stationery still without having to link it from a Doc folder deep within the site.
I read the privacy and the Terms pages on Multiply and I will not go there. I am an artist and create and paint original things and to give them full grabs to do as they please with my work is rediculous.
I refuse to go where ads are forced on me.
I am searching for a new home for my group and I want to upgrade not downgrade.
If there is a techie with a known program to set it up on my domain then I would like to learn how and what to use to do so. That would be ideal.
If your group is a single subject group and that subject does not exist you can use news.annexcafe.com. But if your subject exist you will have to join another existing group. I personally enjoy having newsgroups in my email program, but they don’t allow multi subject groups which is what I need.
I won’t go Multiply which should be named Minus.
Thanks for listening… CherokeeCandy
Don’t worry, Cherokee Candy. Your group sucked anyway. If there was an award for worst manager, you’d get it.
I am the manager of several msn boards in the msn groups and I have been expecting this to happen ever since msn dumped their chat rooms and charged my accout for the yearly dues 11 days before they closed the chats.
For years msn has seen grad students and other high tech people make good programs to offer for sale world wide to compensate themselves for the expenses incured to attain their computer skills. then Microsoft would make a program just like theirs and offer it as free download to the entire internet.
While this may have been received with glee by those seeking to receive something for nothing, those high tech’s viewed it from a very different angle and as a result those Tech’s became MSN Enemies for life and they have dealt misery to all msn products. why do you suppose M/S cannot keep IE working for two weeks in a row without it shutting down on you and doing all the other little quirks that irritate the daylights out of us.
Well those free download eggs have hatched and the chickens produced by them have came home to roost. so not only did M/S have to unload its chat rooms on a system called Sparkpea, it now is going to do the same to Multiply with its groups. you can go look at SPCN chats and you will see that the only difference between their chat rooms and the old msn is the color of the background.
I for one am about fed up with them and while I will not be buying any new PC real soon, I will replace this one with a Mac. and I plan to move away from M/S as far as is possible.
And guess what? Already theres a problem with the migration software so it wasn’t released today as planned. Mind you we had to find out from someone at Multiply since MSN hasn’t even had the decency to make ANY kind of announcement yet.
I’ve also had another look at Multiply and I’m going to have to agree with my members and find somewhere else. After all how can it be called a viable alternative to MSN Groups when it doesn’t offer the most basic requirement of a group site? ie. a discussion forum of some type. All Multiply has is a glorified guestbook to leave messages for one another.
Join this site and show MSN Groups that we’re protesting.
http://groups.m...m/NoImmigration
Spread the word!
No offence, but what’s the point of creating an MSN Group to protest against MSN Groups being deleted?
However, I do love MSN Groups myself, and am struggling to find another site like it to move to. Having checked out Multiply, we have found it to be wholly inadequate for the needs of our group.
Check out http://www.ning.com/ though; I was quite impressed, although it still lacks enough to be unsuitable for our group. We may have to move onto message board software.
So much for protesting, the site was eliminated.
Multiply is horrible. The migration tool is defective. MSN’s biggest troll is Support at Multiply, go figure? I have 5 MSN Groups, and while I’m still researching other services for groups, the site MSN migrated adult groups to, World Groups, is the closest to MSN in setup, and has some of the features of Multiply and Yahoo, all rolled into one, and so far, from what I’ve been able to check out, is easy to use.
Hi.
Simply brilliant platform in which to disccuss a single topic, “The recent anouncement to close MSN groups”.
BUT….. very black and white, If I want black and white, I’ll read a good book.
I’ve been with MSN myself since 2002, first as a chatter then a chat room host in MSN Chats, then as a Group moderator and then a Group owner, with MSN groups. I’m now an owner of several groups that cover a variety of topics. Through ownership I discovered a creative flair and used that to create interesting pages and topic threads. With the click of a mouse you could easily acess and comment on any board or begin a thread of your own.
I also grew socialy from a lost single soul to being married. I also attributed this to MSN.
I met and married another chat host in 2003 at a double wedding of 4 chatters from 3 different states of Australia, both couples will notch up 6 happy years next April. We even married at a historic water pumping station that provided town water to the local town aptly named Walka Water Works [WWW] for short.
I taught myself HTML & now maintain a website. I owe it all to MSN chats & groups. We used MSN groups as an interactive platform to promote our personal website.
I will really miss the social network I had with friends & those I’ve met personaly and kept in touch with through these various groups. Not all my contacts want to join get another network. They are already complaining about having too many accounts with various networks: Live Spaces, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and a multitude of other networks each with it’s own purpose.
The only thing I can see MSN has really achieved after all these years is spread us all out…. I thought communities were about bringing people together?
I refer back to when “Chats” closed it was as if a bomb had hit, people who visited more than one chat room had to join various chat servers to stay in touch with the various chat groups they belonged to. Yet others lost contact because of computer crashes with all the new software that was need to chat in the various servers, if they were not in your IM they became lost souls, I’m hope & pray that some of those lost souls found new friends. It’s not easy to find old friends back when their personal ID’s & nick names changed with each network, because your usual name was already taken….
What will happen with our MSN groups now…. They will be spread further afield
Great Community Spirt Microsoft !!!
There have been some great comments above, I’ve clicked a few group suggestion links and I’m still looking for that one that will be closest to what we are leaving behind… It’s wonderful to have a place to air our opinions… If only someone would hear them.
Opinions on migration
I migrated one of my smaller groups (3 pages and a couple of boards and a 6 album gallery) to Multiply to test out the process. The transistion went smoothly, took about 15 minutes, but when I logged into Multiply, I had to create an new a personal account before logging into my group. An email was sent out to all the members to say the group had moved and to apply for membership… I hadn’t even sorted my mess out and there were members knocking on the door to get in.
The entire msn group message threads were dumped in a blog thread, I switched to edit mode and was able to capture HTML coding from some of the posts to edit my Multiply welcome board but anything that was linked to other boards became a broken link and had to be scraped.
As all the messages from various boards were all in one complete blog thread… and not being familiar enough with Multiplys editing process to know how to move things. My group at multiply is a bit of a mess. Keep in mind it is only a small group…. I wonder how bigger groups will fair. Ok I know there are help forums but it’s the time needed to rework the group ready to accept members and right in this busy time of the year…
****I’d be interested to know how other’s have coped with their merges.
I might leave some links of possible networks to try out. I have tested them and none offer anything as good as MSN. but it’s a starting point.
Please what is the link to world groups so I might take a look there?
NETWORKS for possible forums & groups
[listed below]
http://www.runboard.com
http://www.yuku.com
http://groups.google.com/
http://www.ning.com
http://www.delphiforums.com
Belinda
:Last one out turn the lights off please
OnlineGroups.Net invites MSN Groups Managers to evaluate our online groups sites, as a destination for migrating MSN Groups. We provide good old-fashioned email groups with a web forum interface. They support file-sharing, photo galleries and chat. Public groups are free with unlimited members, posts and storage, and you can have multiple groups on a free site with no ads.
http://blog.onl...group-managers/
Belinda …. may I add another free phpbb based forum host for those msn groups looking for a message board based group. The advertising is acceptable, no pop up windows or flashing adds. Has alot of forum features found in the admin control panel. Not hard to learn but have to start design layout of front page from scratch. All previous msn threads will be lost. As with other free forum hosts – no photo storage area …. have to use photobucket or similar storage link area.
http://www.forumarena.com/
I’ve also heard other MSN Groups are migrating their groups over to BlastGroups (http://www.blastgroups.com) .
It’s a platform that lets you create your own free group website. While they don’t have a migration tool, it’s very easy to create a group site and invite your existing group members.
You can try it out here:
http://www.blas...e_group_website
http://www.aimoo.com/
Has migration bots – you need to make your forum “open” so they can run. I haven’t tried it yet and I haven’t checked out all the alternatives here, but this one is the only one that offers to let you keep your forum history. I help run a football forum and our posting history is important to us.
Multiply – at last report, only migrates 7 pages of your old msn forum. Not good enough really. And it doesn’t have a proper forum that allows people to follow a conversation or quickly spot which is the current or active conversation. You can get all blog posts to your “inbox” but I cannot find any tools to sort out the resulting chaos from the very active support forum. There’s no threading or grouping by conversation. Sucks. If I want a social network – I’d use facebook or something else.
Oh and most deadly sin – multiply crawls. Unless you’re a uni student with an ultra fast connection – forget it. Oh and twenty million clicks to get to bit you want, where as I used to do it with one click.
Aimoo migrations are a waste of time. They only migrate your group as a read only archive. Even private groups are migrated as public archives, which are NOT deleted even if you close our new Aimoo group. Discussions with more than 1000 messages will not open up, discussions do not migrate more than 16 messages. Their bots do not fully read all of your pages, but only migrate some of them, and picture migrations have been poor as well.
I’ve never heard of MoveMSNGroups.com.
There’s also another service, http://movemsngroups.com that offers group exporting.
It’s really a shame for Microsoft to drop the ball like this and leave thousands of people out in the cold. I wonder if it really will shutdown come Feb 21st, or if they’ll extend it.
MoveMSNGroups is a feature of Lefora. They have no idea what they are doing, and Lefora is administrated by idiots. Avoid at all costs.
hey wdc xxx
xxx
happy new year
xxxx
BigTent Groups is a great home for MSN Groups. They have forums, photos, reviews, files, email capability, and member management. Here’s a blog post about how to move your group over: http://blog.big...groups-leaders/
I run a MSN group with over 500 members
BigTent looks very good, lots of admin options like customisable application forms (I’ve always wanted to asked members a few simple questions to help me approve their membership) and custom terms/rules which members must agree to before joining (i.e. “I promise to be good and not to post inappropriate material” etc) and even a fee charging subscription service (useful for some groups I suppose for collecting dibs). Even with all these customisable options it is surprisingly easy to use and seems stable.
Downside ~ so far Bigtent can’t import old messages from MSN (which Multiply can). Also the photo sharing is quite limited (only upload one pic at a time!). I would like to see emoticons option in the message boards too (they are there but only if you know the shortcut i.e. “:-)” results in a smiley face). Also like Multiply the messages seems to have quite a lot of decorative white space, I’d like to see the messages in a more compact layout which suits long message threads.
lefora.com (another forum) says that they can import MSN group message boards and members. A quick look shows that lefora seems to have a better forum page than Multiply, but I could not see a photo album page. Also lefora seems to harbour a lot of advertisement space (lots of blinking areas enticing me to download this and that) which I didn’t like much!!! If Bigtent has advertising on it somewhere, it must be very discrete, as I can’t recall seeing any!
For me BigTent is the winning ticket, but why-o-why can’t they solve the problem of importing the MSN message boards and preferably the member list directly from MSN! They have an option to allow you to invite members from a list (which you will need to make yourself in the form of a spread sheet etc) but not directly from MSN!! BigTent I urge you to solve this before the February switch over, then you would win hands down!!!!!
The final problem with all these new groups (i.e. multiply, Bigtent, lefora) is that none of them seem to offer a customisable “list” option that was present in MSN. I used to use lists to organise meetings, i.e. who is coming, when, and have they paid up etc!
My quandary is this, my MSN group has over 500 members, 4000 messages and 100’s of photos and 10s of “list” pages … thus do I go with the less good (IMO) Multiply and preserve the message and photo archive, or do I start a new group on Bigtent and lose the message and photo archive? Do I use both ~ multiply as a back up and Bigtent going forward? I’m not happy with any of these choices!!!
Huff!
QG
Multiply can provide messed up migrations. Lefora claims they can migrate, but they do not. Aimoo migrations read only archives, but only partially igrates your group.
Although Yuku can not migrate custom pages and photo albums, they do provide easy instructions to save those to your computer. They are the only servcie fully migrating message boards onto usable forums with all the message baords you had on MSN, all the messages intact, including the graphics. they have migrated 2 of my groups very well, a third is nealry done, and the 4th will be done soon.
Bigtent is run by Spammers. They have Spammed countless MSN groups, and hardly anyone from MSN has moved their groups there. Most have moved to Yuku, Multiply, Aimoo, Proboards, Shutterfly, World Groups, Google and a few others.
CM
Thanks for the message, I’ll look into Yuku.
Can I ask what you meant when you said bigtent are spammers? I did get a message from Bigtent (on MSN) telling me about bigtent, which I found helpful. Technically that one email was unsolicated, but still very helpful at the time.
I made a group on bigtent to see what it was like. I have not recieved anything since that I would call spam?
There group system seems too advanced meanly to get a few emails to send spam out to … can you tell me more?
One more thing, can I migrate my group to many sites to see which is best.
Also, it is very important to me that the subject-matter is not made public (i.e. to web-crawling) do you know which sites meet this requirement?
thanks
QG
Creating multiple IDs and applying to numerous groups with an ad for your website in your application is Spamming. The people at BigTent had no intention of actively participating in any MSN groups, merely wanted to Spam the groups with ads for their service. Rather slimy.
Why did you wait untiul there was less than a week left to migrate your groups to ask all these questions when it has been 4 months that we’ve known about MSN closing groups? It is too late to request migration to Yuku. You’d better hurry if you want to try migrating to Multiply and Aimoo as MSN groups close on Saturday. You’d better request the migrations today, and yes, you may migrate to both.
If you’re not pleased with Multiply, there are options – as long as you have a copy of your forum data. See http://sdudley.com/MSNGroups
I have been trying to migrate to Multiply since Jan 16. I thought they would have all the bugs and glitches sorted by then – lol!
The problem with my migration is instead of continuing where it left off it started from the beginning … THREE times.
I now have three copies of my GENERAL board (largest board) and Multiply cannot migrate the remaining 21 smaller boards because the group is now at capacity.
I have been fighting to get the remaining boards migrated and now they are saying Sunday 1st March is the final day of migrations.
Unfortunately I used MSN Groups to back up seven years worth of studies and didn’t migrate anywhere else since I thought I would have no problems migrating to Multiply.
I just stopped by to see what was said about BlastGroups.com. I just moved my team from a forum to a BlastGroups.
I like the clean look and the non-intrusive ads. I needed something extremely user friendly for those in the group that are not up-to-speed on using group sites. It’s working well so far. I hope it stays around.
I looked at many, many group sites before settling in.
the clean look and the non-intrusive ads. I needed something extremely user friendly for those in the group that are not