Redmond, Washington — Barely three months since Yahoo revamped its home page, Microsoft aiming to keep pace with the trend, the Redmond Vole, begins doing the same on Wednesday with its MSN portal. Microsoft is previewing its newly redesigned MSN portal beginning tomorrow, that delivers a modern look and new social networking tools.
Although MSN is far less popular than the company’s Bing or Windows Live efforts, Microsoft is geared up to give its MSN portal a major upgrade, redesigning the popular destination with a new look and feel with social networking hooks such as integrated Facebook and Twitter feeds.
The redesign is rolled out with several new ad offerings, including a more prominent 300×250 ad and synchronized rich media units.
In appearance, the new MSN.com exudes simplicity — a clean-looking navigation bar with News, Entertainment, Sports, Money and Lifestyle, which will replace a clutter of (45 clickable links in the top two inches of the old MSN home page). The blue background will turn into white. The new page will load faster. Content will be more prominent. Video clips will play right from the home page. MSN’s redesign follows new homepage iterations from rivals Yahoo and AOL, MSN is also tapping on various social networks including live updates from Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live which will displayed on the right side of the MSN home page.
Screen shot of MSN’s revamped homepage.
Along with revamping the MSN home page, a new logo is created to match and draw attention to a prominent Bing search bar at the top right of the page. The MSN butterfly has also been given a refresh — its first since 2000.
Microsoft executives said that MSN will also be more tightly integrated with some features of Bing, the company’s new search engine. For instance, local information, like weather, movies, restaurants and traffic, that is easily accessible on Bing will be equally easy to find on MSN.
“This is the biggest and most radical redesign for MSN and its home page in a decade,” said Bob Visse, general manager of MSN’s product management group. “We believe it is an important asset for Microsoft,” he said.
And to smarten up further, above-the-fold content will be determined, where possible, by users’ previously expressed interests. Hence, someone with a history of clicking on sports articles will be presented with more sports content, entertainment fans will see more celebrity stories, and so on.
“Microsoft has endowed a lot of development talent in sophisticated programming that surfaces the information you care about most,” said Lisa Gurry, senior director at MSN.
MSN will begin rolling out the new homepage design to about 10 percent of its users this week. Though Microsoft is giving the public a sneak peek at the redesigned beta MSN site here. A gradual rollout will follow, reaching 100 percent in January.
This is no minor change, but a bold departure from MSN’s previous presentation. Indeed the redesigned site looks cool and a big improvement to the previous blue-themed site design. Microsoft says that the main purposes of the update are to declutter the MSN homepage and to refresh its outdated look.
Images: MSN through the years — view the full gallery here.