First look at MSN rebranding for Windows Phone apps suggests it is subtle

Windows Central

WinC Bot
Staff member
Dec 17, 2013
73,357
57
0
Visit site
New_Glance_Lumia_830.jpg

This morning, Microsoft detailed plans to push their Bing apps, like Weather, Finance, Food, News, to the MSN branding. Microsoft started this process some time ago when they first ditched 'Bing' in the name of those apps, and instead kept them with just their category-generic names.
During the Microsoft #moreLumia event last week, I showed you folks how the Microsoft Weather app and Lumia Denim play nicer together. Specifically, Glance gets what look to be third-party app support, letting other Lock screen apps appear on the Glance screen (see it above on a Lumia 830).

I also dug deeper into the Weather app as it is called 'Weather beta' in the app listing. This section is where I first noticed the 'MSN Weather' name pop up as seen in the About section of the app.

Full story from the WPCentral blog...
 

HeyCori

Mod Emeritus
Mar 1, 2011
6,860
67
48
Visit site
I'm also unsure whether the MSN rebranding will work. However, I feel this might be a better idea in the long run. Unlike Edmonds article from earlier today, I don't think this will be as confusing for consumers. Theoretically, this should make it much easier to connect with Microsoft's various services. You'll be amazed at how many people don't know that their Outlook/Microsoft account comes with OneDrive, Office Online, Skype and numerous other features.

And how would they? Everything's separated into its own webpage. Microsoft tried to integrate other services into one another, like accessing Office from Outlook. But ultimately, Microsoft needs a true web portal. The new MSN is finally that. Plus, MSN is still the 34th most popular site on the net globally (according to Alexa.com), so it's not exactly a dead brand.

Microsoft wants to extend it's internet reach, something that's easier to do when you offer a fully featured webpage. Bing.com is nice but it can't be everything like MSN can. Microsoft clearly wants to tackle Yahoo with this move (the 4th most popular site) and extending their services to other platforms will do more good than harm.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
322,913
Messages
2,242,887
Members
428,005
Latest member
COME ON WIN ANDROID (ADI)