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