MSN News Rebrands And Returns As Microsoft News

The name "MSN" was popular in the 1990s. But as the millennium arrived, it's name started to fade. But no, it's not dead.

MSN was launched on the same date as Windows 95, which was on August 24, 1995. And in the years after that, MSN expanded to multiple products. MSN News was part of this, and it was Microsoft's in-house news operation.

It started its life with an exclusive partnership with msnbc.com for news content from 1996 until 2012. MSN News was originally named Bing News, and it was a news aggregator and service that featured the latest news headlines and articles hand-picked by editors from trusted sources across the web.

In its attempt to lure in more users, Microsoft rebrands MSN News, turning it into 'Microsoft News'.

Available for Android and iOS, Microsoft News brings stories from the company's MSN News effort, but with a more modern interface that should be familiar to those who use the likes of Apple News and Google News.

Microsoft News app on iOS
Microsoft News app on iOS

"Microsoft News is the new name for our news engine that powers familiar sites like MSN.com, and our newly redesigned Microsoft News app for iOS and Android," explained Rob Bennett, editor-in-chief of Microsoft News.

"Microsoft News also powers news on Microsoft Edge, the News app in Windows 10, Skype, Xbox and Outlook.com."

As a start, Microsoft News boasts more than 1,000 premium publishers and 3,000 brands. Microsoft said that its AI is capable of scanning more than 100,000 pieces of content each day, and has over 800 human editors across the globe to select the top stories that its app will surface on users' device.

Microsoft said that it supports publishers by offering them channels to earn revenue.

Microsoft News app on Android
Microsoft News app on Android

The Microsoft News app comes with new personalization features, a new dark theme for better reading at night, seamless integration with iOS and Android widgets, easy to configure breaking news alerts, and much more.

The app is simple enough to navigate with its more modern grid-like structure interface. First time users are prompted to indicate interests so the app can curate the content according to their taste, after which they can browse through stories sorted into the categories they've selected.

If users signed in with their Microsoft account, all news preferences will be synced across all devices the users have logged in on.

Initially, the app is at least slow for some users. Some users also commented about some ads "disguised as news" that are probably frustrating.

On the consumer-facing side, the announcement is simply a rebrand of the company's iOS and Android MSN News apps. As for MSN.com, the company has chosen to keep its existing branding.

Published: 
23/06/2018