Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows published a preview on Windows Live Messenger

The Windows Live series of services (see my preview) is Microsoft's formal admission that the old way of doing things is wrong. Fortunately, it had to look no further than its former MSN division, which had been off doing its own thing, and doing it well. As I described in my showcase, MSN: The Inside Story, a small team of scrappy upstarts, working outside of Microsoft's monolithic development structure, figured out a way to deliver high-quality products and services on a rapid release schedule. This method of doing business--loosely termed Internet Time in the heady days of the late 1990's--works particularly well for products and services that rely on Internet connectivity and large groups of people that want to interact with others. It defined, in many ways, the very business that MSN attacked.

Windows Live Messenger Preview