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Coming soon to Australia: new look for NineMSN, Bing to drop beta tag?

May 2, 2011 10:58 am by Kip Kniskern | 8 comments

A report in The Australian’s business section is reporting that NineMSN, the joint effort by MSN and Australia’s Nine Network, will soon be sporting a new look. The cleaner look, much like MSN.com in the US, will allow users to customize their NineMSN.com home page with links to “Facebook, Twitter, and their bank”. Microsoft and Nine Entertainment will also reveal a new logo, the first refresh in seven years.

The upgrade starts today in the form of a soft-launch, with “a small percentage” of the 2 million daily visitors to NineMSN receiving the new version (we checked from here in the US and are still seeing the old version, along with a beta version of Bing).

(update: here’s a demo of the new look, and the beta of the new site, thanks to Microsoft-News.com)

In the report, The Australian also notes that Bing may be soon coming out of beta in Australia:

Bing, which is soon to come out of its beta testing phase in a marketing push, gains more prominence at the top of the page.

Bing remains in beta in many markets around the world, although France lost its Bing beta tag in March. Hopefully more countries will be seeing a non-beta Bing soon. Let us know if you notice any changes!

(thanks for the Twitter tip!)

This entry was posted in Bing and tagged Beta, Bing, MSN. Bookmark the permalink.

Ch9

The link to NineMSN is not working! :)
- Chris
  
  http://ninemsn.com.au/
- http://www.LiveSide.net Kip Kniskern – LiveSide.net
  
  oops sorry, fixed ;)
Luke Fairburn

Keep us posted! I’ve been waiting for this for months now. Bout bloody time they updated their logo, hopefully it takes elements from the US MSN logo, as well as the site design
Anonymous

Really? I’ve always thought that the NineMSN site design always looked much better than the other MSN sites before the new relaunch.

I actually the think the new NineMSN also looks better than the American MSN. It seems to offer more stuff like a daily poll, nightly TV guide, and more all on the homepage. Anyone else agree?
- Chris
  
  I hate the new msn.com design. I liked the color coded “tabs” a lot more. Took it off my home page after 6 years. New design with all blue tabs looks real awfull.
Whinges

About time. NineMSN have been using the same design for about 10 years.
bernie

and i thought its a virus.. one of my laptops with vista gets redirected to beta.ninemsn.com.au , other laptop (win7) remains at odl version. (both on a network)
beta version is very slow to load… and doesn’t look flashy…