The Anglian Connection

Important Announcement

The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More

Latest News from MSN:

From: charjonesMS Sent: 10/15/2008 6:34 PM

You may have heard rumors that MSN Groups will in closing, I’d like to respond to those here so that our most active users have the information you need to manage your groups effectively. It is true that we are planning to close the MSN Groups service on February 21, 2009 and will offer you the opportunity to move your group to our new partner service, Multiply. We understand the importance of keeping your group together, so we partnered with Multiply to create a migration process that moves your group to their service to preserve your online community and its history. The migration method that Multiply has built for you is still in the beta stage, we plan to open it next week. Once the service is ready we’ll be sending all of our users an email and will post notices within the MSN Groups site with more information, including instructions for beginning the migration process. In the meantime I encourage you to visit http://Multiply.com to get to know the service and see some of the thousands of groups they host already. 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. <Between today and February 21, 2009 the MSN Groups service will remain the same as it is now. We will remove the option to add more storage to your group but other features will remain until the service is shut down and you can use it the same way you do today until the date of closure. Watch the site and your email inbox over the next week as we will post updated information there, including a more detailed outline of your options and next steps. Regards, Charlotte Jones, Group Product Manager, Microsoft

No immediate panic tho ... we have 4 months in which to decide what to do about it!

Your thoughts please?

Oh and another clickable link

Please have a think and let me know what you feel about all this ... I will be able to migrate the group to Multiply from next week - wonder how many people will actually follow it lol

Interesting news. I will have to chek out the link later as I am away this weekend. Finally get a break even if it is a small one!

I believe that we should migrate to Multiply and keep the com intact.

I think I might be too old to Muliply, I can only just go forth although I'm most often last! Will we be able to take our freds wiv us? I hate to think of all those years of wit and wisdom languishing in some MS Digital store room, although I suspect MS would lose them anyway. Lets try to keep the comm intact as Tobler says.

Thanks for comments so far ....

It would seem that in a week or two we will be able to "migrate" the comm, complete, to Multiply - they're working on the how-to's at the moment. To do this appears to be the only way forward in terms of keeping what we have - come February 2009 all the MSN groups will be deleted.

Apparently MSN are about to launch Windows Live Groups, but it will not be possible to migrate groups to that .... we would have to create our group again from scratch - and I have to say, I wonder how long Live Groups will be allowed to exist before they are sold/broken up/destroyed.

I have created a personal page on Multiply already - http://phoebedslr.multiply.com/ if you care to take a look; it's easy to create your own page! I find Multiply to look very like Myspace, Webjam, Livespace et al. However, it's refreshingly unlike Facebook - no need to spam 15 friends to add another app

Anyway will keep you informed of progress (if that's the right word!)

Like Jimbob says, I think I am too old to Multiply, (thank God), but definitely want to be able to stay in touch with everyone......... don't get on as often as I used to, but still care about each of you and how you are doing. Just let me know what I need to do.......... Hilli

I think it makes sense to migrate to Multiply - seems the only practical choice we have for saving our info.

It will certainly be interesting to see how many follow us across the digital wilderness.

Uuumm can we take a picnic?

Okay I came across this in CIT, where someone wrote to MSN asking them why we can't Migrate existing Groups to MSN Live Groups; here is his e-mail and their reply!

"I appreciate that for whatever reason MSN Groups is no longer considered Manageable but as it is being superseded why can't existing Groups Data just be moved over.

Rxx"

Reply

"Hello Rxx,

Thank you for writing to MSN Groups Technical Support. My name is Nadia and I understand that you want to know why it is not possible to migrate your site to Windows Live Groups. I realize the importance of addressing this matter.

Rxx, we plan to launch Windows Live Groups to the public in the coming weeks, as a service that helps small groups or clubs collaborate online. Because this first version of Windows Live Groups is a good fit for smaller groups we chose Multiply for moving small, medium and large Groups to a new service now.

We appreciate your continued support as we strive to provide you with the highest quality service available. Thank you for using MSN Groups.

Sincerely,

Nadia

MSN Groups Technical Support"

Check out this site before you decide on anything. www.yuku.com

Thanks Capps .... looks very interesting! However, we need to migrate to Multiply, whatever we then decide to do .... otherwise we'll lose all our stored stuff!! Anyway I've saved your link to faves for another look or 3

Oh dear,*panicks also* Where else can a kiwi fairy keep in touch with her English pals,(whilst at work an all?)

Keep us up to date, Sheepie on what we has to do to be dragged over..(I mean to migrate) Is that similiar to emigrating? Do we need passports?

*looks very perturbed*

I thought I was the only person entitled to talk rubbish! MSN have got me beat though!

Okay folks, I've taken a look at the "migration" process and no need to panic ....... yet! Theoretically, all the material on this site will then be migrated to the Multiply site, at which point this site will still exist, until the February date, but anything posted here will not be posted also on the Multiply site. So, I'm not going to perform the switch until we all decide it's time!

Meanwhile I can tell you that when the migration occurs, you will receive an invite from Multiply to join the migrated group (it will probably be in your junk mail folder); at which point you will be guided to a sign up page, where your own page will be created (and which you don't have to do anything with, unless you want to), plus a link to the group pages.

No, it's not like MSN's group layout, and will take a bit of getting used to, but at least we'll keep stuff we don't want to lose (hopefully!). Meanwhile, if there's anything of yours you wish not to lose.... please copy to your hard drive b4 February 2009!

I'll keep looking around for alternative group hosting sites and keep you posted .... if you find anything interesting, please share also.

Important Announcement The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More
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