Windows Live and You: “Windows Live services help me keep in touch” (Lance Manasse)
After a longer break, the summer edition of the series “Windows Live and You” is finally back. Today I will be talking with Lance Manasse, who lives in the United Kingdom and is also known by his nickname “Salem”.
mynetx: Please tell me a bit about yourself. Is your life directly or indirectly involved with Windows Live?
Lance: I go by the name of Salem. I’m 22 right now, originally from South Africa (the country, not Southern Africa); however I am currently residing in the Cambridgeshire in the UK. My life doesn’t directly involve Windows Live actually—in fact, I consider myself rather new to the whole MSN/Windows Live community.
mynetx: New? Since when are you in the Live business? Tell me a bit about your history with it…
Lance: Okay, maybe not “New”; I just see myself as new to the whole community when I compare how long some people have been involved. I first started using MSN software in 2003 when I first moved to the UK from South Africa. As can be expected, the first MSN software application I used was MSN Messenger, that’s when I first became a regular user at least. I tried a couple of times before that back in South Africa to chat to my relatives in the UK, but due to terrible internet access (high cost and unreliable) I was only ever able to sign-in twice. (OK, maybe it wasn’t a South Africa-wide internet issue, maybe just our budget ISP. [laughes])
But yeah, I really got into it in 2003. Don’t ask me what version I used, I can’t remember if it was MSN Messenger 6.2 or 6.5, but somewhere around there. I applied to take part in MSN Messenger Beta testing (thinking I’d never get in) back in, I think, 2004. To my surprise, I got in…
mynetx: Do you think the Windows Live team cares for their users’ demands? Why?
Lance: I think people (Messenger users) can be very demanding. Well, Windows Live users can, too; but I’m saying Messenger users as it is by far the most used Windows Live product. Users can be very demanding: wanting things, and expecting to get a feature, just because they ask for it. Yet again, it can be kind of frustrating when specific suggestions/demands get made over and over and over again, and they are just dismissed by the developers.
I think it is easy for the casual users to demand things and not fully understanding the behind-the-scenes work that needs to be done to satisfy that demand.
mynetx: What might be the motivation behind dismissing user’s suggestions, especially when they are made really frequently (example: tabs)?
Lance: Haha, yes, tabs was one of the suggestions I was thinking about. I honestly don’t know, but I think the most likely reason would be, as I mentioned before, the scale of the work involved in getting it to work. However, considering that even a third-party developer (like Patchou) can get it working well enough in an add-on, surely Microsoft can get it working in their own software.
mynetx: Well, the Messenger Plus! creator, Patchou, is just one person and is able to implement it…
Lance: Yes, it is certainly possible. I think of the most frequent suggestions, tabs would be one of the easiest to reliably implement (compared to something like polygamy, the ability to sign-in to multiple accounts from one client).
mynetx: Use your fantasy: how do you think Messenger will look like within the next five years? What new features could it present?
** **Lance: Wow, really difficult question! I would like to see Silverlight/WPF used more. I mean it is Microsoft’s own technology, yet they are not using it.
** mynetx:** Like in the Twitter desktop client “blu”, you mean?
Lance: I have not heard of blu myself, will need to look it up!
mynetx:
Lance: I just mean, Messenger needs a total visual overhaul. I like the different look they introduced in the first beta of the renamed Messenger (from MSN to Windows Live), the orange one. I think many people complained at first about it because it was so “different” (people don’t like changes) so Microsoft reverted back to a GUI similar to previous versions.