Pay Per Click Advertising and SEOMSN - Pay Per Click Advertising and SEO

On-demand video player to be launched by Microsoft

James Oliver — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 08:43:25 +0000

Microsoft’s latest attempt at world domination has been announced this week – they have revealed their new on-demand video service.

Much like the already popular 4od and iPlayer from Channel 4 and the BBC respectively, the MSN video player will offer viewers more than 1000 hours of popular shows both old and new.

The player was actually given a test run in summer 2009 where it was rolled out with a much smaller library, its relative popularity inspired improvements and a significant increase to the library for its official release this month.

During this time, Microsoft have made agreements with a number of high profile clients including Endemol (the makers of Big Brother). The player will broadcast such current popular shows as 8 out of 10 cats and Skins whilst also showing some ‘golden oldies’ like Doctor Who and Young Ones.

Whilst it may seem a fairly pointless endeavour on the part of Microsoft considering the popularity of 4od and BBC iPlayer, the MSN video player does have a bit more to offer. It will come with ‘Silverlight Smooth Streaming’ which will allow users to watch shows in glorious HD. As well as this it will have entire series of certain shows rather then just offering a simple catch up service from the last week.

Users will be able to create their own personal play-list of shows if they are planning a session of sustained watching and the player will even recommend shows based on what you may have already watched.

It would seem that the MSN video player will be a welcome addition to the market as it offers something slightly different from what we already have, variety is indeed the spice of life.

Microsoft remodels MSN homepage

Matt Thomas — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:42:13 +0000

2010 has been a year of major competition between the internets ‘big 3’ of Microsoft, Yahoo and Google as each of them form partnerships and make new deals in the hope of overhauling the other two. So it comes as no surprise that Microsoft has revealed their new MSN homepage to its 100 million users in the United States.

The company has been previewing the major redesign of its MSN homepage since last year as they quietly went about their business collecting user input in an attempt to perfect the site in time for its 2010 release. This comes hot on the heels of their announcement that they are to integrate MySpace into their Outlook program

“Since the preview of our new home page began in November, we’ve been very busy gathering over 70,000 pieces of customer feedback and introducing over 30 updates in our quest to deliver the best home page to stay in the know,” said an MSN blog post this week.

It would seem that Bing has been the centre of attention for Microsoft as of late as they attempt to take on the Google search engine but it is clear that Microsoft have far from forgotten about MSN which is home to two of its most popular programs in Hotmail and the Messenger service.

The timing for this redesign could not have been better as their main competitors Google and Yahoo have been devoting a lot of their time and money into making vast improvements to their respective services in the hope of attracting users from the other sites.

Just recently Google has added the Buzz social networking application to its Google Mail page whilst Yahoo have added a service that allows social feeds from Facebook and other social networking sites.

By the looks of things it is set to be a year of change and innovation from all three companies.

MSN launches Celebrity Gossip Site

Matt Thomas — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:40:52 +0000

As anyone who has ever looked at the year-end stats for Google searches and noticed the preponderance of Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus enquiries will know, celebrities mean a lot to internet users. Finally one of the big online names has decided to properly cater to this market and it’s not the one you’d think.

MSN, arguably the least cool of the big three search providers, has decided to launch a celebrity site intended to rival the likes of the established TMZ.com and PerezHilton.com. It’s called Wonderwall and it’s being backed by Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman, two established TV producers and Hollywood ‘insiders.’

The site is basically what it says, a wall, allbeit one with celebrity pictures, graphics and features pinned to it. It will basically take all the celebrity content on MSN and put it in one place for your voyeuristic pleasure.

But what about tone? Celebrity gossip sites are often fairly bitchy, sometimes even crossing the line into flat out bad taste. Lloyd Braun doesn’t deny this, stating that, “Wonderwall will definitely have edge. Just not over the top.”

It’s that last sentence that may spell disaster for the site, the main appeal of the TMZ’s, Perez Hilton’s and Holy Moly’s of the internet is irreverence, a willingness to attack the sacred cows of celebrity, often viciously. It is, in short, a job for a couple of guys with laptops, not a multinational company with shareholders to answer to.