What is it with home.live.com?

[gonzoislost]

But WHY is MS building another portal brand separate from MSN? What is MSN lacking that requires MS to create a new online brand?

This was explained by several posts before didnt it? :

As far as the overlap between My MSN and Windows Live Home, we see these as different sites with different goals. MSN is a portal to content on the Internet, whereas Windows Live Home is a portal to online services like e-mail, social networking, and file sharing.

If you've been following Windows Live, a distinguishment is made at its early announcements, that MSN will be more content-based, whereas Windows Live are more service-based.

right. MSN, will soon be just the entertament and content portal of micrsoft. Windows Live will be the SERVICES. This news has been around since mid-late 2005, when the very first live betas started to show up. :)

[Digitalx]

Digix, care to explain the pic? I'd like to know your thoughts.

I think he's pointing out that it uses AJAX

:rofl: spot on.

[seebaran]

:rofl: spot on.

So separating services and content is the deal with Windows Live's existence? And because of programming? OK...how lame.

MS has willingly put itself out of parity with its competitors by creating a totally unmarketable, unrecognizable, unattractive, and uninspiring new brand. Services and content have always run together on portals. Why mess with a winning formula? Microsoft should have ran with the fact that Messenger became a flagship service along with Hotmail and devise some way to anchor in new concepts/content/services with that (i.e. - social networking, viral video).

Their approach is all wrong. AJAX programming serving as one of the catalysts to create a new brand is (again) lame because most of the population wouldn't know the difference or even care. What instills confidence in a brand is consistency in functionality, familiarity, productivity, and new ideas that won't alienate the masses. In fact, this whole reshuffle makes it more obvious than ever that Microsoft is truly a software company and not anywhere near the content and media gurus it ought to be via its MSN brand. AOL and Yahoo have been excelling in the content arena for awhile now, along with their willingness to change the way they keep up with web trends. Microsoft always seems to be the last one to budge and when they did budge in this specific scenario - they flubbed up.

Edited September 23, 2007 by seebaran

[choisir]

Oh, wow. I didn't know what you were talking about but just went and looked. That's absolutely HIDEOUS.

And all you people defending MS because it's a "beta," google has been using the "beta" tag as an excuse for everything for years.

You can't possibly deny that MS is promoting these projects like they're finished products already. Just like WLM, and all the others. They looked professional and polished well before the public was allowed in. It's just pathetic.