In Singapore, this story was given front page treatment, with large headlines. In fact, the Straits Times puts this forward as the biggest story of the day (Thursday). If you check in the next few hours, it will probably still be up: http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/ The treatment is the standard one, that it is about porn and spam, but implies hidden commercial decisions also. The paper also gives it a secondary story, in the Home section: http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/singapore/story/0,4386,211353,00.html? Randolph Kluver School of Communication and Information Nanyang Technological University 31 Nanyang Link Singapore, 637718 (65) 6790-5770 Fax (65) 6792-4329

-----Original Message----- From: Steve Jones [mailto:sjones@uic.edu] Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 12:57 AM To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] The death of chat?

Given the international membership on this list I'd be very interested in hearing reactions to MSN's announcement from outside the U.S. The news stories I heard about it on the radio in the U.S. emphasized spam and porn as being the reasons for the closing. Is that the reporting elsewhere?

Thanks, Sj

At 12:04 PM -0400 9/24/03, Karim R. Lakhani wrote:

...

I think this means the web based chat rooms and not IM or real time chat service.

J Sternberg wrote:

...

With Internet Relay Chat flourishing worldwide since its creation in 1988, as well as the ongoing popularity of AOL's Instant Messenger, it seems to me that chat won't be dying out any time soon. Although I don't know of any definitive statistics, my impression is that compared to systems such as IRC and AIM, MSN chat has been just a drop in the bucket.

Janet Sternberg, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Communication and Media Studies Fordham University

Lois Ann Scheidt wrote:

...

MSN has announced that it will be closing or significantly changing its chatrooms worldwide, effective October 14. The announcement can be found at http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=40329

Lois Ann Scheidt MPA MIS SPHR CCP Doctoral Student School of Library and Information Science Indiana University Bloomington IN USA http://www.loisscheidt.com

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-- =============================================== Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan School of Management & The Boston Consulting Group, Strategy Practice Initiative e-mail: karim.lakhani@sloan.mit.edu | lakhani.karim@bcg.com voice: 617-851-1224 fax: 617-344-0403 http://spoudaiospaizen.net/ http://opensource.mit.edu | http://freesoftware.mit.edu http://userinnovation.mit.edu

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