Microsoft has finally redesigned the MSN site. The site, which will not be fully live until 2010, has been given a much more stripped down and cleaner look and has also been adapted to contain a column which is devoted to social networking sites Twitter and Facebook as well as a large search engine box.
On top of this the MSN logo has also been redesigned to fall inline with Microsoft’s Bing logo by adopting the same type font which gives MSN and Bing the cohesion that it is arguably lacking.
It is hoped that the redesign will help drive more traffic to the Bing search engine further putting the heat on Google. According to the BBC the new design will be organized into 5 categories: news, entertainment, sports, money, lifestyle and “more”.
This is a smart move from Microsoft as Lisa Gurry, senior director at MSN quote rightly says that “more than half of people online start their sessions on sites like MSN”. The more people that start on MSN the more likely it is that they will use Bing as their search engine of choice, especially for less web savvy users. Also the fact that the Bing search bar has significantly increased in size also hides no desire to get more and more people using Bing
In all honesty the MSN site has looked dated for a while now and when you compare Yahoo’s recent redesign and how much fresher it looks you can see why Microsoft have chosen to do likewise. Whether this helps in Microsoft’s fight for search engine supremacy remains to be seen, however it this is without a doubt Microsoft using one of their assets to their advantage…