| Home
> Traffick Articles
TEST DRIVE by Andrew Goodman - December 6, 1999
The last major personal portal I reviewed was
AltaVista Live. A strong entry, to be sure. However, in terms
of sheer popularity as measured by unique users, Altavista hasn't yet
cracked the top ten list of web properties. According to a recent Media Metrix report, the top six properties are those owned by AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Lycos, Go,
and Excite.
These rankings actually underestimate the gathering
steam of Microsoft's MSN portal. In
terms of web properties, Microsoft sites clock in at number three,
behind AOL sites (combining dialup proprietary services with AOL's website) and
Yahoo sites. However, in terms of domains, msn.com ranks
second only to yahoo.com. AOL.com is
behind msn.com, in the #3 spot. This makes
msn.com all the more impressive, since the numbers for this domain don't count
visits to microsoft.com, which comes in at #4 overall, or direct visits to
Microsoft's Hotmail.com, the ninth busiest domain.
Shocking fact #1, then, is that msn.com is ahead of
aol.com in terms of unique visitors. I'm about to suggest something else
that may seem shocking. The quality of the new MSN is more than deserving
of this popularity, so much so that MSN could surpass Yahoo! in quality
and popularity in the coming year. Now, after I take a
moment to fend off the blows of fellow Traffick staffers who may
incline towards Yahoo! -- and avoiding the steely glares of those few people who
still do not understand that the empire from Redmond is a benign force in the universe, leading us inexorably towards a world of peace, self-actualization, and no-haggle car shopping -- let me get down to a detailed review of the new MSN portal.
Ease of
customization: It's pretty easy; in fact, it's hard
to imagine how you'd make it easier. Nonetheless, I'll provide some tips on using MSN
in the very near future.
From the msn.com start page, it's a snap to change
colors, layout, content, and your personal zip code. Once you get into all
this, it can take some time, but there is a payoff. Information as you
like it. I had a little bit of static setting it up. In all
fairness, these hassles should be noted, but since the overall quality of the
new MSN is so high, I want to stress that these are minor quibbles. Skip
the quibble (enclosed in the square brackets) if you wish. For now, most
users should fare well if they sign up for a Passport account with a fresh new
user ID. One handy way of doing this is going to www.passport.com.
[
It should be noted that while
Microsoft's new Passport function will eventually make it easier to log into
various participating websites, and the customization process can go very easily
if you're lucky, it wasn't without its glitches for this user. One of the problems I had was with outdated cookies forcing me back into older versions (or defunct pages in one case) of MSN, even when I signed on with a fresh new ID. (In fact, that ID didn't remember all the settings I'd set up on a computer away from home the night before - the cookies on my computer apparently reset everything to some old settings I didn't want.) The best
solution would have been to use a utility to help with selectively cleaning
cookies and other such junk from my hard drive. But that shouldn't have to
be the case. ]
That was probably the worst aspect of this
experience, and it likely won't happen to you. If it does, you know what
to do: tear some clumps of hair out and yell at the
monitor.
Feel & appearance: Superb.
The revamped look is cutting edge and stylish... though uncannily similar to the
new Altavista.
Clutter? This portal isn't so personalizable that you can avoid all
promotional material. Still, it seems less annoying than some others such
as Excite and Netcenter.
Speed:
I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, MSN doesn't seem as lightning-fast
to load as it should be. On the other hand, we need to deal with reality
here. There is so much more to see and do on major portal sites
nowadays -- including going through the personalization process itself -- that
users are going to have to come to terms with a tough choice: upgrade
to high-speed access, or be mightily annoyed at the plodding pace of their web
experience. MSN gets a middling rating in this category.
Breadth of
features:
Mind-boggling.
Innovation:
Microsoft's ability to innovate, they say, is not
innate. They are more like a kind of medium for others' innovations,
assimilating existing intelligence and developing a plan to use it for world
domination (you think I'm exaggerating?). In terms of technical gizmos, we
know that Microsoft prefers to embrace existing trends and then blow the
competition away through sheer execution and marketing. Nothing has
changed. MSN isn't a first mover in the area of instant messaging.
They use MSN Messenger, which is a me-too version of AOL Instant Messenger (and
about which there have been numerous squabbles.) Microsoft isn't an
innovative company, technologically, according to popular wisdom. That's
probably true. But their attention to detail in revamping the look, feel,
content aggregation and search and navigation on the new MSN portal demonstrates
a certain kind of innovation that is very appropriate to the development of a
major international consumer portal.
Content
(proprietary):
Advantage, Microsoft. In short,
the content is impressive. This gigantic company has the advantage of
drawing on its own properties, like Slate Magazine or Microsoft Bookshelf.
On the days I visited, the featured Slate articles ("Is Seattle's curfew
legal?" and "Chanuka food not good for combination skin") were well
chosen: intriguing but not too junky. The look of Slate is also delightful, in concert with
much of the revamped branding of the entire MSN portal.
Content
(partners):
This has to count as 'best of the
web'. The partner content in all categories is extensive. What is
particularly impressive is the ease of use, the nice look and feel on the main
page, and above all, the deep effort to work with premier partners in countries
outside the US. No other portal in Canada, for example, comes close to
offering such a wide array of homegrown entertainment, sports, news, and
financial information providers in such a handy format. Canadians and
other international users should also breathe a sigh of relief that the new-look
MSN will also be their new-look MSN. In the past, there were
different-looking home pages for different users, and that led to confusion, and
outdated material. And stale cookies that took one to defunct pages
(ahem).
MSN has more content than many realize. Will the company
stay the course, or let it die on the vine? We'll see. Some areas
seem like they're done on the cheap. Microsoft Investor, while it's a
glitzy, lavish, full featured finance 'vertical area' for MSN, seems content
with a slate of reporters who are neither as high profile nor as
interesting as those elsewhere. Then again, Microsoft has its finger in a
lot of pies, so that may not be fair.
I got a bit frightened when I found
myself clicking on all of the offered tech-related content providers.
That's going to be pretty unwieldy to look at, creating a rather loooong start
page! But for an info junkie, it's all so good, it's hard to pass
up. One thing that I particularly noticed was the crossover with Windows,
Office, and other MS software-related help.
Overall
rating: In the area of customization and
personalization, and despite some quibbles, there is no question in my mind that
MSN deserves a 3-star
rating as "Best of the Web". Does this mean it's
superior to Yahoo? In my opinion, yes. But this may depend on your
view of what a portal is. For integration of products like mail, chat, and
the like, Yahoo may be the easiest and most consistent for the consumer.
It's as a content aggregator, as opposed to a savvy new space for leading the
'web-based lifestyle', that really puts MSN at the top of my list. But
knowing Microsoft, and observing their systematic re-branding of the whole
portal, and the integration of various services under the banner of their new
Passport system, they'll be playing catchup in the field of web-based
functionality, too.
The imposing presence of the major portals, such as
MSN and Yahoo, puts them in a different class from so many of these lesser, or
more 'vertical,' entities which want to be called portals. Some of these
latter are just neat new ideas, or fall into a category which used to be
described with a plainer term: web site. The major portals really
are on a different plane, and my experience reviewing MSN has just confirmed
this view.
|
