MSN traffic would have plummeted after its redesign
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As many of you will remember, Microsoft's MSN portal renewed its design a couple of months ago, seeking to offer a unified experience between different devices and higher quality content, thanks to agreements with news agencies and other media.
However, 2 months after this change it seems that things have not gone so well for MSN. As reported by Business Insider, traffic to the portal would have plummeted in subsequent measurements made by comScore, and this drop would have also affected Bing, because MSN is one of the main sources of search engine traffic.
This drop in traffic would have been so great that Microsoft would have asked comScore to change its measurement methodology, including traffic from Bing, Skype and Outlook under the MSN label , perhaps precisely to hide this drop in visits to the portal. Because of this, it becomes difficult to quantify the supposed loss of MSN traffic with the comScore data, since it is no longer comparable, but we still have information from other companies that allows us to corroborate the drop. "
Specifically, the company Compete offers comparable data on visits from Bing and MSN for the United States, and in them we canthere was indeed a reduction in traffic for both sites after the redesign:
Even so, Bing's international traffic would have seen little change based on data from comScore (which continues to measure Bing visits separately).
We don&39;t know what are the reasons behind this drop for MSN. In fact, the new site is faster and more functional than the previous version, and most of its traffic comes from being the default home page in Internet Explorer, which hasn&39;t changed. Although one possible reason may be the lack of customization options on the new MSN, which although it allows adding and ordering thematic modules (news, travel, he alth, etc.) , does not allow you to filter news according to more specific interests or add more personalized modules, as was possible in the old My MSN."
What will Microsoft do about this?
According to some sources linked to Business Insider, those from Redmond are considering the definitive closure of MSNThis would be borne out by the fact that Microsoft laid off most of the editorial and site managers in the past month.
In addition, the closure of this portal would not be as dramatic as it sounds, since Bing already replaces many of the functions of MSN , offering automatically curated news via Bing News, and links to other Microsoft services.
"The only problem I see with this is that Microsoft has just rebranded its news, he alth, finance, etc. applications, passing them to the MSN brand and stripping them of the Bing name. If MSN were to shut down, that change would have to be reversed, leading to confusion and misunderstanding among users, and giving the impression that Redmond is capriciously changing the names of its services."
Although apparently there is some whim behind these decisions According to the same Business Insider sources, there would be an internal struggle between executives from different divisions of Microsoft for who gets the Internet Explorer home page. These executives are Terry Myerson of the Windows division, Derrick Connell in charge of Bing, and Qi Lu in charge of consumer online services (which includes MSN). They would each be looking for the Internet Explorer home page to function as a showcase for their respective area within Redmond.
I think it is unfortunate that such an important decision, both for the company and for the users, ends up being taken based on an internal dispute of forces. Maybe it's time for Satya Nadella to step in from higher up, to settle the issue once and for all in a way that fits the goals of the new Microsoft .
Via | Business Insider
