MSN customised page gets beta update

re: MSN customised page gets beta update

CalumJR — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:33:36 GMT

To be honest, I'm sick of all this brand confusion! I've decided they should just rebrand the name back to MSN (apart from Live Search), but keep all of the features, user interfaces & the logo!

Simple as! It stops brand confusion! Stops multiple products (i.e. this one) & it is, in essence, a better name, as it is more fitting, uses much less syllabuls & people already, still, refer to Windows Live Messenger as MSN.

re: MSN customised page gets beta update

timsline — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:57:33 GMT

I've been using my.live.com what must be over a year now when the page originally was in beta at live.com. Now I see this my.msn.com, and I'm just left completely confused with why Microsoft is trying to basically compete with itself. Both pages look great, but there is one very noticable difference between the two. my.msn.com has an advertisement in the upper right column of their pages, while my.live.com does not. So I guess I'll be sticking with my.live.com's slightly cleaner layout for now.

re: MSN customised page gets beta update

Alimaggs — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:04:12 GMT

Oh - looks like the beta is rolling out in multiple markets with localised content. Nice:

http://uk.next.my.msn.com

re: MSN customised page gets beta update

Alimaggs — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:18:19 GMT

I like it. It just gets me thinking that splitting off Windows Live from MSN was maybe a bit of a silly move. There's already so much duplication over the brands (MSN shopping, WL product search, Live Search Cashback). I can see the reasoning between splitting off the search parts (developing a stand along search brand) but even that's become too complex with Windows Live and Live Search resting on the same domain name (I mean, if I wanted to find windows live, I'd type in Live.com not home.live.com)...

...And, any way, does anybody actually call Windows Live Messenger by its actual name, because in my experience, it's still a case of "do you have MSN?" or "talk to you on MSN in a bit"....

I think the mistake is that Windows Live is just not a cool enough branding to compete with Facebook and MySpace from the social application point of view (which is the way wave 3 is heading), and attracting the non-savy generation (such as parents and grandparents) isn't working because everything's so complex and disjointed and there's no marketing effort whatsoever, at least in the UK.

At least MSN is a strong Internet brand, stronger - in my opinion, at in the UK - than Windows Live.

So I think the efforts on my.msn.com are great, I just don't see what makes MSN different from Windows Live when so many services cross over, and the branding still sucks (heck, even MSN still uses "MSN Search" and "MSN Messenger" when promoting the services from the main page).

I'd just merge MSN and WL back together and keep Live Search seperate.

re: MSN customised page gets beta update

Jeremy Bost — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:35:43 GMT

It seems that Microsoft should merge MSN and Windows Live...because the new MSN home page and the my.live.com are sort of the same.

And people will wonder which (the Live one or the MSN one) to use.

re: MSN customised page gets beta update

Alber1690 — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:16:17 GMT

That is very nice and good news. It's been years since I

ve visited my My MSN page...now I might consider going back. Also...it's kinda weird how MSN technologies have morphed into current Microsoft technologies (MSN Software sidebar: Windows Vista sidebar, transperancy first seen in MSN software, MSN menu bar: toolbars in Vista and Live/MSN toolbars, intergrated search, email solutions, My MSN: My Windows Live (I don't remember feeds being so prominent back then, and yet My MSN was at the forefront of that). Interesting...and thanks for this.