The above flyer sent out by Microsoft tells us to forget everything we thought we knew about Hotmail. Honestly Redmond, we at The Noisecast already have, albeit Hotmail still being the worldwide market share leader in web-based email clients. However, even though Microsoft retains its email dominance, gradual declines in both U.S. and worldwide market shares even after last year’s Hotmail revamp have prompted an event on October 3 to “give Hotmail a second look.” At first glance it would seem like Microsoft is going to give Hotmail yet another revamp a year after it’s previous one, but I hardly think this is the case.
Instead of announcing a service relaunch Microsoft will instead go over whatever feedback they’ve gotten from the revamp this past year and announce the implementation of some new back-end features as well as a front-end feature or two. It is strange that Microsoft is creating an entire event based off of this which is why many people expected a relaunch of the service or some drastic changes. With Gmail gaining steam and rumors of a Yahoo-AOL merger afoot, Microsoft needs to wind up the hype machine in order to retain its worldwide email dominance and possibly halt its U.S. market share slide. This event will be Microsoft’s way of pulling a Dan Hesse to let the world know that Hotmail is continuing to improve itself to the benefit of the end-user and that they take feedback and suggestions seriously.
*thanks to Waly K. via Marian for the tip*
Source: winrumors
Hotmail, to me, has always been akin to driving someone else’s car. It just doesn’t feel the same.
Oh! Oh! I still use hotmail! Is it going to become cool again?!
I wish Hotmail will updating the Site to be Metro UI, Something Like Zune. I can imagine what the interface looks like…
They still have to keep it slim, to load on older machines, and for customers that don’t want crazy changes.