Microsoft is bringing some of the biggest changes to its MSN service with a revamped web portal and deeper integration with mobile through apps for iOS and Android.
Microsoft, the world's largest software company, is transforming MSN, notably the biggest change the service has seen in its history of nearly 20 years. Building on CEO Satya Nadella's "mobile first, cloud first" strategy, the new change to MSN.com gives the service a significant boost with a revamped web portal and a suite of new mobile apps for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
MSN, which aggregates news from around the web in one place for online readers, will feature a simple and a cleaner interface in its revamped web portal. A preview of the upcoming site is live here, where online readers can sort news based on their categories and also set preferences. As the company plans to launch a slew of new Bing consumer apps, which Microsoft is rebranding as MSN apps, user preferences will be synced across all devices, including PC, iPad and Android smartphone.
"You only need to set your favorites once, and your preferences will be connected across MSN, Cortana, Bing and other Microsoft experiences," Brian MacDonald, Corporate Vice President of Information And Content Services at Microsoft, said in a blog post announcing the new move. "Whether it is your watchlist of stocks in MSN Money, your favorite sports teams in MSN Sports, or your recipe collections in MSN Food & Drink, those things will always be with you at your PC at work, on your iPad in the living room, or on your Android phone when you are on the go."
MSN's new homepage will feature a new column on the top called "Services Stripe," which brings one-click access to personal services such as OneDrive, Outlook, Office, OneNote, Maps, Skype and social media services like Facebook and Twitter. The revamped site also includes productivity tools like the shopping lists, savings calculator, medical symptom checker and 3D body explorer, USA Today reports.
In order to bring premium and reliable content from across the web, Microsoft has partnered with The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, AOL, TechCrunch and Huffington Post in the US; The Yomiuri Shimbun and The Asahi Shimbun in Japan; Sky News, The Guardian and the Telegraph in the UK, NDTV and Hindustan Times in India, Le Figaro and Le Monde in France and more, MacDonald said.
MSN.com boasts a worldwide audience of 437 million and ranks 26 in the top US sites, which is based on the average daily visitors and page views over the past month, according to Alexa. Since the site is still in the preview phase, it is expected to come with more upgrades before a full featured release. The company did not reveal when the new MSN will come out of its preview phase.
