BACK BEFORE WE have ever heard of WhatsApp, there was another method of communication which we used. MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger was our first real method of instant chatting and it changed our lives.

Here are 9 reasons who should abandon all other forms of social media and go back to MSN.

1. Nudges.

Sometimes you could be chatting with your friend and suddenly they’d stop responding. Did you sit there and wait? No – instead you sent them a nudge every 30 seconds (you couldn’t send them consistently for fear it would crash the programme or be seen as bullying). Your friend couldn’t ignore you if you made their chat screen shake violently for 3 seconds could they?

2. Winks

Before we had GIFs, we had winks on MSN. We had the giant hand who would knock on your computer screen, the giant kissing lips and the giant laughing lady who sort of looked like Mrs. Potato Head. We need more of these in our lives.

3. You could write in different colours

For all of Facebooks advantages, you cannot change the type of font or the colour of the font you write in. On MSN Messenger you could write in blood Wingdings. Nobody could understand what you were saying but it looked deadly didn’t it?

4.  You could set moving profile photos

MSN Messenger was really ahead of its time to be fair to it. You had your big picture of yourself (duck face pose obviously) or you could have a celebrity if you wanted. I used Nelly Furtado for a good while. But also your picture could move so you could seem really snazzy. A simpler time.

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5. You could really assess your friendships

There was nothing quite like the cold sword of betrayal that was your best friend being actively online but not talking to you or responding to your messages. Arctic levels of cold.

6. It allowed us to pretend to be offline

On the other side of that coin we all had annoying friends who ALWAYS wanted to talk to us whenever we were online. Now sometimes we wanted a break and MSN gave us that ability by allowing you to pretend to be offline. At last, peace.

7. You could log out

If you were having an argument with your boyfriend/girlfriend/friend and you wanted to win the argument, you could log out for dramatic effect. Can’t do that on Facebook can you? I mean you can leave a group chat but that’s only if you want to be extra dramatic.

8. It made sharing music incredibly easy

At least one of your friends always had the latest music, probably because they were using LimeWire and infecting their computer with all sorts of stuff. As soon as they got it, they’d send it to you over the audio file sharing feature for free. What a time to be alive.

9. You could find out how people really felt about you

Nothing like having a crush in primary/secondary school but not really being able to express your feelings because you were 12. So what did you do instead? Tell them you liked them and if they rejected you, pretend you got hacked by a friend and that they sent the message. Smooth.

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