Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Microsoft’s New Facebook-friendly Hotmail

Microsoft unveiled a new Facebook-friendly version of its free, online email service today in an attempt to reverse market share losses to Google’s fast-growing Gmail. In a bid to recapture growth, Microsoft is renaming the service Outlook, a name familiar to most corporate workers who use Microsoft's Office email application. Users can link up with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, to see the latest updates from friends and contacts. Online chat is available via Facebook.

LinkedIn has also planned to integrate its services with a LinkedIn plug-in on Microsoft. Users will have to login once with their Linkedin account details and will then be able to see profile information within Outlook. Information from Linkedin will also be displayed on People Cards, which Microsoft is marketing as a new feature in its upcoming version.

Despite such drastic steps to revamp their email website, Google’s cloud service may still be much more sophisticated than Microsoft’s. At first glimpse, it seems the only selling point for me is using SkyDrive which gives you more storage space than the Google Drive (7GB compared to 5GB).

Article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-microsoft-launches-revamped-facebookfriendly-hotmail-20120731,0,272756.story and http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2194574/linkedin-will-hook-up-with-microsoft-outlook-2013

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