Kirsle.net
About a decade ago, I wrote a blog post titled "SmarterChild and Other AIM Bots" where I talked about some nostalgic memories from my early days with software development when I programmed my own chatbots that ran on AOL Instant Messenger.
I said on that post that I would follow it with a blog about MSN Messenger chatbots, but I never ended up getting around to doing so! So let me get into that finally, a decade later, with this blog.
In 2026, it is possible to get back online with MSN Messenger and sign them in to new servers hosted by Escargot.chat, so I have recently been playing around with MSN as well as AOL Instant Messenger in recent days -- AIM is also back with new, open source online servers that can revive the old messenger apps (and chatbots!) and give this old software something new to do in the modern era.
👉🏻 See Also:
I have recently posted a video on YouTube where I get my old Perl chatbots that I last touched in 2004 back online again connected to modern MSN and AIM chat servers, so check this out as well!
Without further ado, let's get into some of the weird & interesting quirks of MSN Messenger that was revealed when we popped open the hood of the MSNP protocol to develop our chatbots back in the day!
This is Part 1 in a series of blog posts about my adventures programming chatterbots for instant messengers in the early 2000's. In this series of posts, I'll focus on one instant messenger at a time and dive into the interesting quirks and challenges we botmakers faced when programming bots for them.
The order of the posts will roughly start "from the beginning." This is Part One: AOL Instant Messenger.
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