Update: Microsoft to Roll Out Big MSN Redesign
March 10, 2010
Update: After some delay, Microsoft is reportedly now rolling out the new MSN home page design over the next couple weeks.
Original Article: MSN.com gets about 85 million unique monthly visitors in the US alone, according to Compete. That's significantly more than AOL.com. So now that Microsoft has unveiled a redesign to it, it stands to reason that a lot of people are going to be affected by it. Microsoft calls the new design MSN's most significant home page redesign in over a decade.
"Now is the time to clean up the mess on the Web — people need less clutter and less hassle to find what matters most to them," said Erik Jorgensen, corporate vice president, Microsoft. "Microsoft is uniquely invested in search, media experiences and technical innovation. Combining these assets to deliver our new MSN home page is a tremendous win for customers and advertisers."
What do you think of the new design? Share your opinions here.
The new design pays significant focus to local, Bing, social networks, and news. Coinciding with the announcement of the redesign was the unveiling of MSN Local Edition. This is a section of MSN that gives you local news, weather, sports, movies and events, restaurants, gas, traffic, a directory, lottery numbers, etc.
The Bing integration with the new MSN is deeper. It's now used as the core search technology throughout the home page in areas like shopping, travel, and local. It is also used as a way to highlight hot topics, trends, and people.
There is a clean integration of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as Microsoft's own Windows Live "What's New," which aggregates up to 50 web activities from various places like Yelp, Flickr, Pandora, etc.
"Customers told us they want the latest information from their favorite sources, their friends and the breadth of the Web — and the new MSN home page delivers via a fresh new look and new features," Jorgensen said. "Today is an important transformation for MSN, and it’s just the beginning."
There is also an emphasis on de-cluttering the home page. Microsoft says there are 50% fewer links than on the previous version. Here's what the whole thing looks like:
The design is not live on a wide scale yet. It will be rolling out gradually over the coming weeks. It is, however available as a preview here.
On a related note, Microsoft is finally launching MSN Music this week. The launch has been postponed since July.
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Yahoo And NBC Benefit From Winter Olympics
February 19, 2010
Yahoo Sports said today traffic to its site during the Winter Olympics has soared, beating out both NBCOlympics.com and ESPN.com.
According to comScore, Yahoo’s Winter Games coverage attracted 9.3 million unique visitors, more than NBC’s Olympics site (7.6 million unique visitors) and ESPN (8.4 million unique visitors). Yahoo Sports attracted over 17.5 million unique visitors over the week, more than double the visitors to its nearest competitors.
Meanwhile, NCBOlympics.com on MSN has generated more than 177.4 million page views, 414 percent more than the nearest competitor, according to comScore. NBC says visitors to its Olympic site spent more time and viewed more pages than visitors to Yahoo’s Olympic site.
On average, visitors to NBCOlympics.com spent 8.2 minutes per visit, 64 percent more than the five minute average for Yahoo users; and visitors to NBCOlympics.com on MSN averaged 27.5 pages per visit, more than seven times the 3.8 average pages per visitor for Yahoo.
While NBCOlympics.com leads in pages views and time spent, and Yahoo Sports leads in unique visitors, there is little doubt that the Winter Olympics have been good for both properties.
Yahoo And NBC Benefit From Winter Olympics
February 19, 2010
Yahoo Sports said today traffic to its site during the Winter Olympics has soared, beating out both NBCOlympics.com and ESPN.com.
According to comScore, Yahoo’s Winter Games coverage attracted 9.3 million unique visitors, more than NBC’s Olympics site (7.6 million unique visitors) and ESPN (8.4 million unique visitors). Yahoo Sports attracted over 17.5 million unique visitors over the week, more than double the visitors to its nearest competitors.
Meanwhile, NCBOlympics.com on MSN has generated more than 177.4 million page views, 414 percent more than the nearest competitor, according to comScore. NBC says visitors to its Olympic site spent more time and viewed more pages than visitors to Yahoo’s Olympic site.
On average, visitors to NBCOlympics.com spent 8.2 minutes per visit, 64 percent more than the five minute average for Yahoo users; and visitors to NBCOlympics.com on MSN averaged 27.5 pages per visit, more than seven times the 3.8 average pages per visitor for Yahoo.
While NBCOlympics.com leads in pages views and time spent, and Yahoo Sports leads in unique visitors, there is little doubt that the Winter Olympics have been good for both properties.
Microsoft and Facebook Adjust Their Partnership
February 6, 2010
Microsoft and Facebook have "enhanced" their partnership with each other. The two companies will soon be providing Facebook users with what Microsoft refers to as a "more complete search experience". They will be providing full access to Bing features in Facebook. In addition, the Bing and Facebook connection will be extended globally.
Facebook will be taking over full responsibility for selling its own display ads, although Microsoft will continue to provide search ads. "Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy," says Bing General Manager Jon Tinter.
"Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook," he adds. "This change will also enable Microsoft to continue its focus on driving strong performing campaigns across our own social media and communications tools, including Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, and via rich content environments across MSN and Xbox Live."
"Going deeper in web search experiences with Facebook, in addition to the collaboration we announced last October about bringing public data from Facebook's API into the search experience, will enable us to do great things together for our customers," he says.
The product of this enhanced relationship between the two companies will start being felt among users in the coming weeks and months. It will be interesting to see if Yahoo advertising gets involved if the Microsoft-Yahoo deal ever sees the light of day.
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