Today Microsoft released preview of the most fearless attempt to change MSN home page in the years. The page is now following Yahoo! and Google minimalistic concepts delivering plain content, not the decorations.  Right now MSN is one of the world largest and most visited website. According to Alexa it ranked 11th in the USA and welcomes more than 600 million world wide users monthly and 100 million users in the US.

You can check it by yourself on http://preview.msn.com.

So, why redesing?

According to Qi Lu, Microsoft President of Online Services

"It is more important than ever that we offer a compelling experience for our customers to begin their online activities. Today half of all internet sessions start with one of the top three portals, which claim more than a quarter of all the time spent on the web..."

Another big reasons might be users complains about current performance of the site. Due to the large amout of visual elements, MSN is slower than 72% of internet sites (Alexa) and desire to even better promote Microsoft's new decision engine Bing (http://bing.com) 

So, what is new? Microsoft claims four major innovations:

·  New User interface - reduced links on the page by half and removed the clutter to deliver a fresh new design

·  Better Search Engine Intergration - Bing is deeply integrated throughout the homepage and content experiences and brings you the best of search and Bing’s advanced decision-making tools. 

·  The new MSN Local Edition provides you a home base online with the most comprehensive local news and information. 
 
·  Better social networks intergration - Windows Live What’s New (including Yelp, Flickr and Pandora), Facebook and Twitter integrated directly into the home page. Also you can view your status in-line, tweet, and see what your friends are up to without jumping to multiple sites.

I played with MSN preview a little this morning and the only complain from my side would be the new UI; being loyal MSN user for the last 4 years, I will surely miss the old interface. Yes, it was cluttered but I got used to it. In my opinion, following Google in simplisity is not the winning model for MSN home page. I am on high speed interned and I want to have rich web browsing experience not the impression that my CSS didn't load.

From the other side, I loved social network and ehnaced communcation features, it is obvious  that Microsoft follows the users needs on this and listens to the customers; starting with BingTweets - combination of twitter search results with bing search results and now with MSN home page updates.