The Garden Of Babble-On

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

Some of you may have noticed this post by one of our members, Wind:

Dear user..windows live groups migrate..bla bla.. Fake ?

We've done some further investigating and corresponding with MSN asking specifically whether or not the letter in Message 12 with the ID# SRX10815898101D is true. This is what we received in response:

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RE: SRX1081670277ID - MSN Groups:Manage Group

Hello ****,

Thank you for writing to MSN Groups Technical Support. My name is Geri and I understand that you are inquiring about Group migration to Multiply.com. I will try to address your questions to the best of my ability. I realize how important MSN Groups is to you and I appreciate that you've written to us regarding your concerns.

Change is coming

As you may have noticed we've made considerable investments across MSN and Windows Live to enhance your product experience while aligning our online services brands. As we make new product investments, our intention is to offer new products and capabilities while keeping you connected to your online network.

Can you give me specifics?

For now, unfortunately, I cannot give specifics about the new products and updates we have in the works. We will however be communicating updates in the near future so definitely be on the look-out for those.

Any important announcements from Microsoft about MSN Groups will be posted at the MSN Groups homepage (http://groups.msn.com). In the near future, we hope to provide you with more information and establish communication channels through which you can provide feedback.

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

Sincerely,

Geri

MSN Groups Technical Support

MSN

Will try to find out more

Miriam

Sent:

Wed 10/15/08 7:45 PM

To:

xxxxxxxxx

Thank you for writing to MSN Groups Technical Support. This is regarding your inquiry if MSN will be moving MSN Groups. I realize the importance of this matter to you.

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 want you to be able to keep 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 will be ready next week. Once the service is ready we'll send 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 you can visit http://Multiply.com to get to know the service and see some of the thousands of groups they host already.

Many users are asking why we are closing MSN Groups. We want to provide our customers with the most current and user friendly technology available today and we made the difficult decision to close the MSN Groups service as part of our 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 still have access to your Group and its data 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 nothing will change about the MSN Groups service except that we will remove the option to add more storage to your group. 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.

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

Sincerely,

Dot

MSN Groups Technical Support

Thanks for posting this. What a shame that MSN has decided not to host groups any more.

They have often been a pain in the butt. However, I'll be sorry to see them go as I'm a great believer in

"Better the devil you Know".

I'll take a look at Multiply with great interest . It's probably an Age thing but I don't cope with change

as well as I used to..

Sorry to be a pain..............

I keep reading about this multiply.............

but what and where is it?

Takes a lot to get through to my old grey matter..............

I'm thick you know!!!! LOL

Hi Guys

Looks like we are definately going loose our groups as we know them

There is so many other sites out there and i have friends who know more about these things then i do and they are sifting through them to find the easiest and best.

Aimoo..........looks ok

Yuku........not sure about yet

Yahoo.......weve heard about

Multiply......looks promising.

Will try our best to keep the group as we know it.......in the mean time keep posting..........hugs Jenny

I'm with Jenny on the coming changes. I'm certain that between us all we will all quickly suss out Multiply and keep our garden blooming

In the mean time take the "multiply" Tour here Click

Hope this helps..........

MSN Users - "Test" Groups - Please Read

<NOBR>Oct 18, '08 10:43 AM</NOBR>
by Linda for everyone

We are trying to make sure everyone here from MSN knows NOT to create their group yet (manually) from MSN. As MSN users register each day though, some may not be getting this information. For all Multiply members who are assisting MSN users, please make sure that this information is given to every MSN user they assist. It is very important!! And please, all MSN members pass this information to your MSN contacts already here and over on MSN in your groups. You may also link to this post (it is a public post).

Do NOT create your groups yet if you are going to use the Migration Tool which will move your group content from MsN to a new group here. This is IMPORTANT. Because the Migration tool will CREATE your group for you. If you manually create your group first, when you use the Migration tool you cannot reuse your Group User ID to use the migration tool. You will be required to choose a NEW group ID.

Because of this information, many MSN users are creating "test" groups because they wish to familiarize themselves with Group Features. Be aware that more group features may be forthcoming. This means you may not be seeing all of the group features that will be available to you.

Because you can only use any USER ID or GROUP ID ONCE, even if you cancel the personal or group account, that means no one else can EVER use it again. PLEASE when creating these test groups, consider carefully that you are locking up a GROUP ID that can never be used again after you delete the group. This takes away the ID for any User both from Multiply and future MSN users. Many MSN users will be coming here both during this time before MSN GROUPS close and long after - even up to a year or more. We don't want available valid GROUP and USER ID'S to be locked up from future users.

My suggestion is, that if you are going to do this, PLEASE use an innocuous GROUP ID. You can use "testgroup" with numbers after it that mean something to you. It's highly unlikely anyone will want to have and keep any TESTGROUP ID with your specific numbers.

We appreciate your kind consideration in this matter.

MULTIPLY USER SUPPORT

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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