More than 1/3 of all Internet users worldwide visit MSN every month. 400 million people. That’s way more than AOL’s 80 million, and not ridiculously out of reach of Yahoo’s nearly 600 million. But still, it’s the most popular Internet portal that no one actually ever goes to. Starting tonight though that’s going to change. Or at least, MSN is changing. We’ll have to wait and see how usage numbers are affected if at all.
The most notable change is a new logo and lots less blue (a screen shot of the old MSN is below for posterity). Everything is sleeker and easier to read. Not as many links. More video (hot HD stuff using Silverlight). Lots and lots of Bing bling and Live.com services.
And of course, there’s Facebook. And Twitter.
Log right in on the bottom right of MSN. Half of their monthly visitors are already Facebook users, says Microsoft. And 15% use Twitter. So having the ability to read and create Facebook and Twitter messages right from the portal page is a good idea. For users with Silverlight, more advanced apps will be available.
Microsoft will roll out the new version over time. But if you want in right now, and just absolutely positively can’t wait in line, you can see it immediately by going to http://preview.msn.com.
It looks like they’re using the same designers as comcast.net
You mean AOL
Great idea to include local section in mainpage. I want to see what all over world are seeing – to guage media influence on people, same time i want local news. All newspaper websites should do this kind of local section.
that actually looks sexy… i’m tempted to leave igoogle
Definitely easier on the eyes, seems odd though looking at the preview page and not seeing the old blue background, but like the local edition. Don’t recall seeing that before.
I LOVE IT…
This is a million times better than the old site.
Quite nice! Looks promising!
MSN is huge overseas. I’m assuming because it the default landing page on IE which is also the default browser on windows.
I never did like using MSN, but right now, it looks great. I’ll try using it more often now.
It looks pretty damn good to be honest. I don’t think I’d actually use it, as I’ve never been a big fan of “start pages” – but I applaud the effort. The current MSN is pretty lame.
Yup – it’s beautiful. I just made it my default home page.
I like it.
Does MSN have such high traffic simply because it is the default home page of so many Windows IE users?
And Mike, dare I ask if TC is up for a touch up soon? CNN.com, MSN.com and others are leading the charge lately.
its not the default page for IE, the computer manufacturers always set their own defaults
It has lot of traffic because on Hotmail logout it redirects to msn homepage! Same case with yahoo.
And yes, Arrington redux. Ever since post on “featured losers on facebook”. Im loving old TC.
most of the time the default for IE in computers is a web-page on the manufacturer site with a search box or the international page of their site.
the default for IE from Microsoft is live.com
My bad – default IE homepage appears not to be MSN. I’ll confess I’m on a Macbook using Safari 90% of the time and was going off poor memory of IE.
But man does MS have a *%# load of various portal URLs.
It looks quite promising
and like others said, it does look nice. very sleek.
The MS fanboy respones are cracking me up..,. Seriously, it’s not that great! Yeah, I need Zune ads taking up 1/2 my browser space.
Large ads or not…Its light years better than the old design…
@ScottE,
Apple fanboys are either busy having dinner with theirs parents or busy cleaning their basement (mother’s basement to be precise). If not, they would have been here earlier to trash every little thing that MS comes up with or updates.
“their” not “theirs”
Looks way better…
I want my blue back.. In all seriousness though: Go MSN..
looks good. might change form my.live.com to this..
>> “The most notable change is a new logo”
Uhm… are you serious?
Very sleek. Nice job.
The MS slant of the above comments is ridiculous. Is this what Arrington was talking about on Twitter? Did the MSN promo/ad group Waggener Edstrom leave all of these comments?
http://twitter....atus/5413109127
re: Arrington’s tweet about wagged
If I had to guess, TC agreed to a news embargo, and someone jumped the gun, so Arrington is pissed (again).
easier to read, sure. but it looks like every other blog or news site.
at least with the old ugly overly blue design i knew i was at msn.
I like the old design better.
because?
Looks neat. Rumors were that new MSN will use silverlight heavily. What happened MS chickened?
It looks definitely better than the old one.
Looks loads better, but there’s still little more chance of me willingly visiting than there is of me robbing a bank.
Am I the only one who doesn’t really like their new page too much?
I mean it’s an improvement on the old one, the old one was definitely too in your face but this new is the complete opposite, you want to focus on it but can’t.
The background is white and the text looks Grey, I’m finding it hard to read.
Plus I can see 4 bing search boxes on that page, are Microsoft trying to cram Bing down people’s throats or is it just me???
I think it’s a nice design, and definitely a step in the right direction. With all the traffic that MSN receives, it undoubtedly needed a tweak to keep more of it – and to get more people to use the Bing bars at msn.com.
Still, you want to compete with Yahoo! for traffic? Make a fantasy sports system that rivals theirs. Fantasy football and baseball are the only reasons I ever go to an actual web portal anymore.
It looks a LOT better… but I’m surprised it’s getting the amount of traffic that it’s getting.
Maybe it’s just the age demographic, but I haven’t heard anything about that site since the early ’00s
Put simply it is graphic redesign with no upside for users in the overhaul. Another example of msoft changing graphics, hoping that a little gui redesign will dazzle us and mask the absence of functionality (just like Windows). Bigger still is that this page is LESS customizable in content and module than my msn. And I’d say fine, use it if you want, but they have now redireceted my hotmail logout to it, which is frustrating in the extreme. Why do I always have to change my behavior because msoft wants to be seen as an ‘innovator’. Try ‘innovating’ a reliable consistent os and gui for a change.
I don’t know, maybe it’s an age thing. I don’t particularily like the new page, especially the white background. For someone who has any type of vision problem, the white is way to bright. It makes it very difficult read. If the page has to be white please change the color of the writing and links. But I actually prefer the blue page.