On Tuesday, the Redmond, Wash.-based company said the weeklong interruptions to the service had been put to an end. But regardless of the service's status, Microsoft could be cleaning up the mess made by the outage for months to come. And while the company battled its service problems, at least one instant-messaging rival said it has gained converts.
"The most serious ripple effect is that there isn't a ton of loyalty among IM users. This is particularly true for Yahoo and MSN, and a little less for AOL," said Jupiter Media Metrix analyst Nicole Lewis.
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