Microsoft has decided this week to take down its 4200 public and private support newsgroups, beginning the clean out on June 1st.
All users of the newsgroups will be pushed to the Microsoft Forums, where they can get support from Microsoft Answers, MSDN and TechNet.
Says the software giant: "Newsgroups run on an outdated and discontinued platform that is no longer supported, making them vulnerable to spam and other usability issues. As a result of our continuous investment in community and the rise of social media, growth in our forums has been consistently increasing since their launch."
Traffic to the newsgroups has fallen 48 percent in the last year, and the company says it will close down the least-used groups first, moving its way to the most popular ones at the end. On the other hand, the Microsoft Forums have grown by 12 percent each month, and now total 15 million visits per month.
"Moving to forums aligns the end user experience with current market trends, reduces the number of redundant support resources with centralized, searchable content, allows users to identify content contributors across forums, and makes contributions more broadly available and impactful," adds an MS spokesperson. "Forums are also moderated by Microsoft to ensure content is accurate and to encourage richer conversations."
Says the software giant: "Newsgroups run on an outdated and discontinued platform that is no longer supported, making them vulnerable to spam and other usability issues. As a result of our continuous investment in community and the rise of social media, growth in our forums has been consistently increasing since their launch."
Traffic to the newsgroups has fallen 48 percent in the last year, and the company says it will close down the least-used groups first, moving its way to the most popular ones at the end. On the other hand, the Microsoft Forums have grown by 12 percent each month, and now total 15 million visits per month.
"Moving to forums aligns the end user experience with current market trends, reduces the number of redundant support resources with centralized, searchable content, allows users to identify content contributors across forums, and makes contributions more broadly available and impactful," adds an MS spokesperson. "Forums are also moderated by Microsoft to ensure content is accurate and to encourage richer conversations."
