Microsoft Teams celebrates 5 years of general availability and coworker nudges

Would you believe it’s only been five years?

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What you need to know

It’s finally here: The fifth anniversary of Microsoft Teams proper. On March 14, 2017, half a decade ago, Teams hit general availability and put Zoom and Slack on watch. And now… it’s still doing that.

In a celebratory post over on theMicrosoft Teams Blog, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper penned a short, focused recap of the journey his company went on to bring Teams as far as it’s gotten. Starting with a small hackathon project, the communication service’s story sees it quickly grow into being the all-encompassing powerhouse platform it is today.

Part of that huge growth stemmed from the pandemic. In the three months following March 2020, Microsoft claims Teams experienced a ten-times growth boost, helping contribute to the service’s most recent user milestone of having approximately270 million active monthly users.

Of course, not all of Teams' growth is due to external forces such as the worldwide pandemic. A lot of it boils down to Microsoft improving its service to consistently compete with and exceed competitors. Though, one should consider that the company’sunique marketing strategiesare also possibly playing a factor.

Microsoft Teams has lasted five entire years in general availability and shows no signs of slowing down. You can download it on a multitude of platforms and stay connected with your cohorts wherever, whenever.

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Robert Carnevale is the News Editor for Windows Central. He’s a big fan of Kinect (it lives on in his heart), Sonic the Hedgehog, and the legendary intersection of those two titans, Sonic Free Riders. He is the author ofCold War 2395. Have a useful tip? Send it to robert.carnevale@futurenet.com.