The new MSN arrives

Earlier this month, we unveiled a first look at the new MSN. Over the past 3 weeks, nearly 10 million of you took the opportunity to test out the new site and more than 80,000 of you even took the time to tell us what you thought. Based on your feedback, we have made numerous changes to the site. From everyone here, a sincere thank you.

Over the next 72 hours, we will roll out the new MSN to the more than 425 million people in over 50 countries around the world that come to the site each month. In addition, people using Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 will have the option to update their devices to the new MSN apps starting today. At the top of the homepage, you will see easy one-click access to all of your favorite services including Outlook.com, Office, OneNote, OneDrive, Skype, Facebook and Twitter.

The new MSN is here

The new MSN is completely built from the ground up on Azure to provide massive, cost-effective scale (with more than 30,000 Azure cores for serving and 100 Terabytes of storage), reliability, and ongoing agility for a cloud-first, mobile-first world. Every single line of code was re-written to ensure that you have one consistent experience regardless of whether you are accessing your stocks in MSN Money, your favorite sports teams in MSN Sports, or your recipe collections in MSN Food & Drink. All of those experiences will always be with you across your devices.

The new MSN provides a global, comprehensive perspective from thousands of worldwide, authoritative sources across 11 categories. It’s simple to personalize what you want to see based on your interests. In the coming months, we will release a suite of MSN apps across iOS and Android to complement today’s release of the Windows and Windows Phone apps. You only need to set your favorites once, and your preferences will be connected across MSN, Cortana, Bing and other Microsoft experiences.

MSN app updates arrive on Windows 8.1

In Windows 8, we introduced Bing Apps to help you explore your world with a set of immersive vertical experiences. With today’s release, we now have one unified, consistent Azure-powered experience that spans the apps on your Windows 8.1 device to MSN in the cloud. While Bing will continue to provide search and intelligent experiences, now the apps will be branded to reflect their alignment with MSN as a premium experience for content, combined with personal productivity features. Aside from Bing Finance, which will now be MSN Money, all of the apps retain their existing names.

MSNPreviewLaunchMSN_Web

We are also rolling out updates to the Health & Fitness and Weather apps, making it easier to access what’s happening from the lock screen of your phone. Now at a glance, you will see up-to-the-minute weather statuses from the Weather app. If you’re running the Nokia 1520, 630 or 635, you can keep track of steps taken via the pedometer and GPS tracker in the Health and Fitness App directly from the lock screen. No need to launch the individual apps.

MSN apps

World class content

With the new MSN, we focused on bringing the best-in-class content from the leaders in both content and data from around the world. In the U.S., some of our premier partners include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, AOL (including TechCrunch and Huffington Post) and Condé Nast (including Vanity Fair, Epicurious, Bon Appétit).

Worldwide, we’re excited to showcase The Yomiuri Shimbun and The Asahi Shimbun in Japan; Sky News, The Guardian and the Telegraph in the United Kingdom, NDTV and Hindustan Times in India, Le Figaro and Le Monde in France, and many more.

As autumn has just arrived, we urge people to go check out the site and customize the Sports experience to showcase your favorite NFL team or peruse the Food & Drink section to find that perfect recipe for fall.

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