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

Has anyone else seen this? Please read the link. LS

ATTN: CF Members**Changes coming to MSN Groups

msn groups to close feb 29th or something of 09.

Multiply is more of a blog type thing. Don't much care for it.

Aimoo and Yuku is ok

This is the only thin I have received so far.

Announcement from Managers of Chat Central Gateway

Reply

MSN just gave us a good quick kick in the bum. Let's not make it worse by acting emotionally and irrationally and doing things we will later regret. Don't abandon your MSN groups. Your members need you to maintain them now more than ever. Don't be in a hurry to migrate or move anywhere. Assure them that collectively as a group you will survive. It may not be on MSN, but you will survive. You may wind up with something better.
     Chat Central Gateway has been through this when it was still a relative baby. We had less than a thousand members and only a handfull of active chatters when MSN announced they were canning chat. Many jumped ship and bailed. I guess they figured a group that was chat based was a dead ducky. With Your help, we not only survived, but we have grown to almost 10,000 members with hundreds of active groups usingOur Chat services... our chat services that are completely independant of MSN and will survive beyond MSN.
      We have several months to figure out how to fix this impending mess. Help us help you. Take the time to educate yourself by asking questions on relative threads. We may have a series of Q & A chats as well as polls on the boards. Take the time to attend and participate.
     We have no immediate plans for migrating this group, deleting it or transferring its contents anywhere. We have not explored all our options yet. We will announce it well in advance before we do anything. We recomend that you accord your membership the same courtesy.

Blaze and Erin
CCG managers

In the Washington Post

Confirmed: Microsoft Gives Up On MSN Groups, Hands It Off To Multiply

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).

Wow! I was so mad when they stopped the chatting. FYI: I tried to join the backup group and I was denied.

Learning, you have an email from me, [email protected] about this.. Let me know about what you think. May be in your junk email folder if you're not getting it in your inbox.

Regarding back up group at yahoo(stayintouch),If you were denyed please try again.,if you use another yahoo name,please list your MSN name.You must be a member of this group to join.

Do you believe the yahoo home will be our new home? I never registered and just assume register wherever it is we end up.

There should be a "transition date" before that Feb 21st closure, (you know, say starting the month of Feb, we are at the new home) have it announced and that way everyone can be up and running while still having the option to communicate here if something there goes wrong.

ABRDB, we really don't like the yahoo set up and are looking into other options.Stayintouch is just a way for us to contact each other when MSN goes down.

Yuku and Aimoo are forum type places that a free and easy to use,

I will be using them for moving my group.

I will let my group be migrated to mulitply to see how it is. And will check out Live when it launches.

Both Yuku and Aimoo have options to set up an Admin board seperate from the regular boards. You lock it so only your Admins and or Moderators (is you want moderators) can view it. The big difference is you can post adult at Yuku but you can't at Aimoo. If you go with Yuku cause you want adult but know that adult isn't everyones cup of tea you can also set up a seperate board on it and allow access only to those who want to access adult. I know this group isn't adult just thought I would throw that out there in case anyone wanted to start a group of their own that isn't Wally World related.

Both also have Private Messaging so you can send messages back and forth between members without having to give your email addy if you don't want to give it out.

I don't like the Yahoo set up. I use Yahoo for PSP related groups and just really hate getting every single message sent to my inbox from everyone. Yes I know they have the option to set it to where it only goes to the orginal sender but with what I use it for that is pointless if more than one is wanting the same thing.

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
W-WAssociates	[email protected]