First appeared in Associated Press
Microsoft is hooking up MSN.com with a hipper sidekick to
broaden its appeal and stay on top of the Internet's hottest topics.
The trend-tracking service, called "msnNOW," tunes
into the buzz by sifting through millions of Internet searches and links
circulating among the hordes on Facebook and Twitter. The chatter is then
distilled into the equivalent of a digital water cooler - a place where people
can go to keep in touch without taking up a lot of their time.
After months of development, the new feature debuts
Thursday.
The service is primarily aimed at college-age teenagers and
young adults who are increasingly relying on smartphones and other mobile
devices to remain plugged into what everyone is talking about from one hour to
the next. It's an "information-snacking" addiction that msnNOW is
looking to feed with a smorgasbord of morsels served up a team of about 20
editors who will write 100-word summaries of the stories driving online
conversations, said Bob Visse, MSN's general manager.
Although it's tailor made for people on the go, msnNOW isn't
offering an app for smartphones or computer tablets. It can be reached on all
mobile Web browsers. The service alsol includes tools to make it easy to share
on Facebook, Twitter and email.
Taking the Internet's pulse isn't new. The main page on
Yahoo Inc.'s website has highlighted the top trends for years and Internet
search leader Google Inc. calls out the top queries each day. Twitter regularly
updates its rankings of the most-tweeted topics.
But MSN believes its new service will prove to be even more
effective because it is drawing upon Microsoft Corp.'s expertise in data
management and relying on human editors to ensure the real-time site is more
compelling than a list of words and links.
Facebook Inc. and Twitter also have negotiated deals that
make more of their data available to Microsoft's Bing search engine than to
Google, but msnNOW isn't relying on that privileged access, Visse said.
Instead, msnNOW is conducting its analysis through the public entryways that
Facebook and Twitter offers to all websites. MsnNOW is also leaning on
BreakingNews.com, a part of MSNBC that also pores through a variety of social
media to find interesting stories as they unfold.
MsnNOW's reliance on Bing to monitor online search activity
could be a drawback because it processes far fewer requests than Google. But
Bing is picking up more cues now that it's powering Yahoo's search engine as
part of a 10-year partnership. Combined, Bing and Yahoo have a roughly 30
percent share of U.S. search volume compared to 66 percent at Google.
Bing's second-banana status in search is a big reason why
Microsoft's online division has been a financial albatross. The software
maker's online operations have lost about $8 billion since June 2008.
MSN.com remains one of the Internet's top destinations with
about 520 million users. In comparison Facebook boasts 845 million users, Yahoo
has about 700 million and Twitter has more than 100 million.
