Microsoft Beefs Up Hotmail With New Features
Here's a stat for you web junkies, Hotmail is still the most widely used email service, at more than 355 million active accounts worldwide, according to online tracking firm comScore.
The key word there being active. It's unknown how many are inactive. Either way, Yahoo comes in second, then Gmail. Frankly, it's a bit surprising to see Hotmail still leading the pack as many people considered it basically obsolete when Gmail changed its features. Well, Hotmail is not taking a back seat to anyone now.
Taking a page from their complete overhaul of Windows for the Windows 7 release - focusing on community and consumer involvement - Microsoft applied the same line of thinking to their Hotmail overhaul as well. They have added a plethora of new features including social media integration.
That's right, not only can you check your email, but you can also manage your social networks right from the same window. In effect, it has a lot of the same functionality as Tweetdeck, in the way you are now able to open multimedia right in the email, such as Flickr slide shows or YouTube videos.
Says Walter Harp, director of product management for Windows Live, "There's a space at the top of your email and you can interact with other websites without having to go to them. If you get photos sent to you from Flickr, you don't have to go to Flickr, you can see them right in your inbox. If you get a video from YouTube or Hulu you don't have to go to those websites, you can click and watch it right there in your inbox."
This is one of the great new features in the new Hotmail called "active views." As Harp mentioned, it's a way to keep the user on the screen, in their email so they don't have to hop back and forth between windows.
The next new feature that should please a lot of folks that like to share pictures and large files through email is that the 10MB size restriction has been lifted. What is the new size restriction? 10 gigabytes. Using a new Microsoft service called SkyDrive, large attachments are uploaded to SkyDrive which has a 25GB allotment for each user. The recipient is then sent a link, where they can download or view the files. Traditional email attachments have been preserved, with the size allocation upped to 25MB from 10MB.
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