For other meanings of MSN, see MSN (disambiguation).

MSN (or Microsoft Network) is an Internet service provider and web portal (initially meant to be a parallel net to the Internet) created by Microsoft on August 24, 1995, coinciding with the release of Windows 95. The MSN moniker has since been extended to Microsoft's Hotmail webmail service and the MSN Messenger instant messaging client, as well as other Microsoft-branded websites.

With 9 million subscribers, MSN is the second largest Internet service provider in the United States behind America Online service with 26.5 million.

According to the Alexa web ranking system, MSN.com is now the #2 most visited English website on the Internet, behind #1 competitor Yahoo!'s Yahoo.com, due in no small part to the page being the default home page for the Internet Explorer web browser.

The word "MSN" has come to be synonymous with "MSN Messenger" in Internet slang. In other words people use phrases such as "I'll talk to you on MSN later." To use MSN Messenger, the users must have a Microsoft Passport Network account.

Personalised features on MSN require the use of a Microsoft Passport. These personalised features include My MSN and Hotmail.

Criticisms

• In order to log into MSN's internet service provider one must have MSN Messenger installed. This has led some to believe that Microsoft uses that condition to prevent people from uninstalling their messenger from their computers, thus creating a type of vendor lock-in.
• Even if the user does not install MSN Messenger, MSN Web Messenger can be used, although the latter only provides very basic operations, and is much slower.
• It is not made obvious to all that a Hotmail account is not the only type of .NET Passport. A very large percentage of .NET Passports are Hotmail accounts, and some people believe that this has taken away from other web-based email providers.

Affiliates

Microsoft has collaborated with many other big-business companies to create additional features on MSN.

• MSN Shopping — affiliated with eBay, Pricegrabber and Shopping.com
• MSN Encarta encyclopedia with premium for more articles than standard.
• MSN Firewall, a (slightly) rebranded version of McAfee's firewall for MSN Premium subscribers
• MSN Chat — Chat service that is based on subscription only(US$19.95 per year)
• MSN Match — affiliated with Match.com; dating service
• MSN Money — affiliated with the CNBC cable network. Has a free public chat room running since about the launch of MSN, now renamed to CNBC - MSN_MoneyII, with an MSN Groups virtual community, and also available on MSN Chat.
• MSN Sports by FOX Sports — affiliated with Fox Sports; sports news service
• MSN Spaces blog community launched December 2004.
• MSN VirusScan — affiliated with Trend Micro, virus services for MSN Hotmail and MSN Premium services
• MSNBC — joint venture with NBC; news service
• NineMSN — joint venture with Television Network Nine Network Australia
• XtraMSN — joint venture with Internet Service Provider Xtra in New Zealand
• MSN AdCenter, a contextual advertising program that has been announced but yet to be released
• Sympatico MSN; joint venture with Bell Canada, a Canadian telephone and internet service provider

See also

• Windows Live
• MSN Maps
• MSN toolbar
• List of search engines
• MSN Shopping

External links

• MSN.com
• MSN Messenger
• MSN Shopping
• MSN Chat
• MSN Member Directory
• MSN Groups
• MSN Video