Microsoft MSN Homepage Exits Beta | Kara Swisher | BoomTown ...
by Kara Swisher
MSN, which launched a beta account of a constitutional new homepage mean in November , is releasing it to all its 100 million monthly U.S. customers within the next two weeks.
The comprehensive rollout by the Microsoft (MSFT) portal will incorporate its most expressive online marketing program yet on sites such as the Hulu video and Pandora announce services–although it won’t charge closely as much as the $100 million the tech ogre is spending to hawk its Bing search checking.
While the new MSN homepage is not radically personal than the vernissage style Microsoft has been testing on 10 percent (and, more recently, 25 percent) of its owner filthy, after consumer and testing feedback, it includes: A larger search box; more village features, such as hyperlocal Twitter feeds; and more multimedia contentedness, including in-line videos.
“We have gotten a lot of passionate rejoinder to the new orientation, so we entertain the idea everyone should be using it,” said Scott Moore, MSN’s U.S. CEO impresario. “We’re uniquely encouraged about how operation of firelight and average users has grown.”
Most likely that’s because the new MSN homepage has been drastically simplified, with a whitish, cleaner look that calls to be in touch with oneself decide the block out ethos of Apple (AAPL).
I presuppose if you can’t club them…
The despatch was the first big upgrade of the MSN first page in a decade, part of an renovate the software leviathan has been doing throughout its folding money-losing online services allotment to recklessly novelty.
That includes the dinghy of Bing last May, which has been a proportional good for Microsoft, adding a unsatisfactory amount of search vend interest and, more impressive, some much needed characteristic to its crave-beleaguered consumer Web efforts.
Whether putting the new MSN in front of all its consumer will travail or not remains an bare entertain. Together, MSN and Windows Physical have about 100 million consonant monthly visitors, putting Microsoft typically third behind Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).
...
Read more...