14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has launched a completely new version of its MSN portal, that comes not only with a fresh look, but also with improved features for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.
At this point, the new portal is still in preview stage, but most of its features are pretty fast, so everyone can give it a try no matter the device they’re using.
The new Services Stripe tool, which is placed at the top of the homepage, allows you to quickly access a number of popular Microsoft products, such as OneDrive, OneNote, or Office 365.
New tools and fresh design
What’s more, the portal comes with a few new tools, including a shopping list, a savings calculator, a symptom checker, and a 3D body explorer.
“Looking at this landscape, we have rebuilt MSN from the ground up for a mobile-first, cloud-first world. The new MSN brings together the world’s best media sources along with data and services to enable users to do more in News, Sports, Money, Travel, Food & Drink, Health & Fitness, and more,” Microsoft says in an announcement published this morning.
“It focuses on the primary digital daily habits in people’s lives and helps them complete tasks across all of their devices. Information and personalized settings are roamed through the cloud to keep users in the know wherever they are.”
In order to provide the best possible content available on the web, Microsoft has joined forces with several well-known news sources, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Vanity Fair in the United States, and The Guardian, The Telegraph, Sky News, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Hindustan Times in the rest of the world.
All-in on a mobile first, cloud first approach
What’s more important, however, is that the new MSN portal is part of Microsoft’s transition to a mobile first, cloud first world that was first announced by the new CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year, when he replaced Steve Ballmer at the helm of the company.
Nadella thus stepped away from Ballmer’s “devices and services” approach, putting the focus on customers and explaining that the new Microsoft must be obsessed over users.
“Obsessing over our customers is everybody's job. I'm looking to the engineering teams to build the experiences our customers love. I'm looking to the sales and marketing organizations to showcase our unique value propositions and drive customer usage first and foremost,” he said in February.
“In order to deliver the experiences our customers need for the mobile-first and cloud-first world, we will modernize our engineering processes to be customer-obsessed, data-driven, speed-oriented and quality-focused. We will be more effective in predicting and understanding what our customers need and more nimble in adjusting to information we get from the market.”
The new MSN portal can be accessed with any modern browser, but to take full advantage of its new features, a Microsoft account is needed.
