From my ignorant point of view Microsoft had in its very own hands a solid competitor to Facebook but ended doing absolutely nothing with it.

I still can recall the MSN/Hotmail profiles - it was kind of a news feed that recorded all your statuses from MSN (or you could add your own there). Your contacts could add comments on those. I seem to recall at some point you could add posts with pictures too.

But all of that just disappeared when they ditched MSN.

They could’ve beat Facebook in its own game easily, as they had the advantage of their huge userbase - but somehow they missed on that too.

Trillian gang

I recall using MSN as far as in to 2009, but the friends I was connected with migrated to Facebook when their chat feature rolled out.

another reason to hate facebook

Same, it was pretty much an instant change too. Which sucked as Facebook chat was very unreliable at the time and obviously not very feature rich.

The article touches on that

The advent of social media and mobile devices couldn’t be ignored either. These technologies were enabling new ways for people to stay in touch with friends and family that didn’t involve a traditional computer.