The company plans to roll this redesign out slowly over the next few weeks - though all users will be able to switch to the new site through a link on the old homepage.

Fewer Links - Less Clutter

To make the site less busy, Microsoft has reduced the number of links by 50%. In the old design, the categories were organized in dozens of boxes. This gave the page a very busy look. Microsoft now uses tabs that give the site a more modern look and which also reduce clutter.

The new MSN puts a lot of emphasis on search. The new homepage doesn't just feature a Bing search box on the top. The new MSN has another search box at the bottom of the page and Microsoft also integrated Bing shopping and travel search in other sections of the site.

MSN Users Don't Want Customization

When we talked to Lisa Gurry, Microsoft's senior director of MSN, she told us that only a very small number of MSN's users actually wanted to spend a lot of time customizing the site. Because of this, the MSN team decided to automate this customization as much as possible through a reverse IP lookup. Through this, the homepage automatically displays local news and weather reports based on a user's location. Those users who want to customize their MSN experience extensively can continue to use the MyMSN homepage.

Flawed Execution: Facebook and Twitter Integration

Microsoft also added some new social networking functionality to the MSN homepage. Users can now track updates from their friends on Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live. MSN's users can also send status updates right from the MSN homepage. According to Microsoft, 52% of MSN users are on Facebook and 14% are on Twitter.

A few key features are missing from the Twitter integration, though. There is no character count, for example, and no easy way to shrink URLs. There is also no way to see or send direct messages or @replies.

While the Facebook widget at least features a 'comment' link, users are still taken to Facebook's own site to write their comments.

Overall, the social network integration could be a lot more interesting if the MSN team just added a few features. MSN is obviously trying to attract mainstream users who don't follow thousands of Twitter users, but even the most mainstream Twitter user expects to see a reply button in a Twitter client. AOL's homepage allows users to reply right from the Twitter widget.

Local News

The new site now puts a lot of emphasis on local news. The new local edition features extended weather reports, movie times, concerts, restaurant reviews and information about local gas prices. For restaurant reviews, Microsoft takes users to Bing's local search.

Radical Change

The new design is a radical departure from the old MSN and some users who were accustomed to the old site will surely feel disoriented when they wake up to the new design.

Among the large homepages like Yahoo and AOL, the new MSN now sports the most modern look. This is not a highly customizable, Netvibes-style homepage, but MSN's users aren't asking for this.

Writes Marquez, "Tom Curley did not clarify how a product that provided some news earlier would work or specify the target customers for the potential new service." However, more than anyone, we know the value of this service.

Independent bloggers continually struggle to scoop rival outlets to the point that embargoed releases are often broken. Some outlets have even chosen to forgo embargoes all together; however, ReadWriteWeb makes every effort to honor them. To a tech blogger, a 30 minute lead may mean the difference between the front pages of Digg, Techmeme and major traditional outlets, or appearing like a pack journalist. The groups that purchase a 30 minute lead on tech stories will solidify a huge influx in feed subscribers and mobile app downloads and as a result, gain more favor with advertisers.

Photo Credit: Marina Campos Vinhal

Identity providers are now making it easy for 3rd party content sites to turn content consumption into a social activity. From real-time conversation to recommendations, there's a whole lot of potential here. That said, we do have some concerns about Hulu's implementation.

It's notable as well that Hulu didn't build its own social network from scratch. That would have been a waste of resources. Instead it is leveraging already established social networks elsewhere.

The most important consequence of the announcement may be that the OAuth protocol used to securely access social networking data without requesting a user's password is now being placed in front of millions more people than it has been before. That's good news.

Concerns About Hulu Friends

On the other hand, it's sad that the OpenID community remains small enough to be left out in the cold by Hulu. In theory the site should be able to add an OpenID login button to its list and pull in standard Friend of a Friend data from any identity provider at all.

Barb Dybwad at Obsessable wonders whether Hulu Friends is actually a reason for Hulu to be less "friendly" with other social video platforms that want to play Hulu content in their communities - specifically Boxee.

Finally, we're concerned that Hulu Friends isn't being featured very prominently on the site. It takes a few too many clicks to get to the friend syncing page on Hulu. We're not seeing Hulu activity pushed out to social network activity streams, either. In fact, it looks like Hulu is using the legacy Facebook API, not the fancy new Facebook Connect. Is the company being overly cautious about Hulu Friends? If they are, its limited adoption could become a self fulfilling prophecy.

All in all, though, we feel positive about Hulu Friends. We hope the company innovates on top of the idea and makes more moves towards integration with the open web.

At this time last year Google was at 64% and MSN was at 9%. Momentum remains with Google, but is that momentum inevitable? Could things change? We've written about three ways that it could.

Some have argued that Google's approach to search is outdated and slow to change. Apparently it's working just fine for them today, but there's a world of opportunities for other innovators to come up with a better search experience. We wrote about this situation in our recent post titled "How Vulnerable is Google in Search?"

Hitwise tracks 46 other search engines as well, which added up for a combined 1.7% of searches last month. 46 alternative search engines is like a week's work for our network blog AltSearchEgines, check it out if you'd like to learn about the rest of the industry, including some that may become the challengers of the future.

Semantic Web

Yahoo! is #2 today, but is taking the lead in support for standards based microformats and semantic web indexing. Yahoo! announced that it would index semantic markup three weeks ago. Since semantic markup could enable improvements in search quality by orders of magnitude, this could be a turning point for Google and Yahoo!

As we explained when that announcement was made:

Today, a web service might work very hard to scour the internet to discover all the book reviews written on various sites, by friends of mine, who live in Europe. That would be so hard that no one would probably try it. The suite of technologies Yahoo! is moving to support will make such searches trivial. Once publishers start including things like hReview, FOAF and geoRSS in their content then Yahoo!, and other sites leveraging Yahoo! search results, will be able to ask easily what it is we want to do with those book reviews. Say hello to a new level of innovation.

We'd like to get an update on the Yahoo! semantic indexing announcement, though, and presumably this is the kind of thing that Google will do soon as well.

Privacy Backlash

As Google grows continually stronger and more knowledgeable, the importance of the social contract between the company and its customers becomes increasingly more important. Google has not been as good as it needs to be about taking clear steps to guarantee security and prevent misuse of user data - including its own misuse of that data!

We wrote in February about how Microsoft's new levels of engagement with oppenness and data portability could offer an avenue to challenge Google, but few of our readers agreed in comments. You know what they say, though - if your mouth gets washed out with soap, you may be saying something important!

It may not be Microsoft that challenges Google, but it certainly seems possible that users will draw the line somewhere and look to limit Google's omniscience.

Perhaps not, though. Perhaps Google's search dominance will continue to grow and grow, month over month, year over year. Someday, if you want to know about your genetic propensity for a particular disease, you'll just as the Google. If you want to know what your kids are doing at home while you're away, you'll just ask the Google. Certainly today when we want to know what's on the web, a clear majority of us just ask the Google.

AOL Video was one of the first places Hulu content appeared. Before anyone had even had a look at the Hulu beta test, videos from the service began showing up on AOL. The site is not the most attractive, however, and their content is not complete. For example, AOL video only has 6 episodes of NBC's "Chuck" -- Hulu itself offers 12. Their player is also generally lower quality than the one on Hulu, and clips can't be embedded.

However, the Hulu on AOL user does show nearly 5000 clips, with some of the most viewed receiving over 35,000 views. It may not be "Dick in a Box" on YouTube numbers, but there is no denying that Hulu is effectively getting its content out through the AOL channel. For the Hulu watcher, though, this is not your best option.

Video site Veoh just recently announced a partnership with Hulu began running Hulu content, though the site has no official partnership with Hulu. Their new TV Shows section, which offers access to 153 shows, is largely powered by Hulu. They too offer less content than Hulu itself, but unlike AOL they're using the actual Hulu player due to using embeds, so quality is higher and embedding by users is possible.

Generally, Veoh is a well designed site that is easy to navigate. The experience, because of the player, is a lot like Hulu. If you're already using Veoh for other things, then it is good place to watch Hulu content. Unfortunately, I was unable to get Hulu content to work through the downloadable Veoh player -- I kept getting an "unknown error." Because of that and the limited content selection, Veoh also probably isn't the best place to consume Hulu videos.

Launched last week, MSN Video Guide is the latest Hulu partner. The site is slick, but when it comes to actually navigating to specific episodes, it falls somewhere in between Veoh (good) and AOL (bad) in terms of usability. Unlike Veoh and AOL, MSN seems to have more Hulu content -- they actually list all 12 available episodes of "Chuck." Oddly, though, many of them arent't available, with the site insisting that "no airings of this episode were found in the next ten days." Huh? Many of the other episodes are only scheduled to be watchable for a short time (i.e., they have a notice like, "Available for 11 more days.")

When you actually do find an episode you can watch, MSN is wrapping it in a smaller player than the one Hulu uses. The result: lower quality and no way to embed -- or even rate and comment. For this reason, MSN is also not the best place to watch Hulu.

MySpace Primetime is where Hulu's catalog resides on the world's largest social networking site. They appear to have the entire Hulu catalog, and though they use their own player, it is better than the ones employed by AOL and MSN. Still though, it isn't up to par with Hulu's own player and embedding isn't allowed.

Hulu content on MySpace is framed in the way that all MySpace video is -- so commenting and rating is the same. Despite MySpace's huge audience, most of the Hulu content doesn't seem to be doing that well. Even for very popular shows like The Simpsons or K'ville (the most popular Hulu show on AOL Video), plays only number in the low hundreds on most clips. We can't help but think that if Hulu content were available on YouTube (the way some NBC content used to be), those hundreds of views would be hudreds of thousands.

The TV section at Fancast, a video web site from Comcast, is mostly powered by Hulu. Our "Chuck" test turned up 9 episodes -- more than AOL, but less than what is actually in Hulu's full catalog. At least we didn't find any videos that had expired or were scheduled to, though.

Fancast also uses its own player. It seems a little better in quality than MySpace (and leagues better than AOL), but still not quite up to par with Hulu. There also isn't any embedding and isn't much in the way of social feature (i.e., no commenting). Fancast might be a good choice for Comcast subscribers, but for anyone else, it isn't the best place to watch Hulu content.

OPENhulu

While Hulu is still in an invite only closed beta, some smart people realized that the clips on the site are embeddable. So in order to provide early access to the masses, a handful of sites offer the Hulu catalog via embeds. The most well-known of these is OPENhulu. The site recently received a cease and desist from Hulu and will be changing its name -- to what I'm not sure -- but it is still operational this morning.

Because the site is using embeds, it is using the Hulu player and thus offers more or less the same viewing experience as Hulu itself and, it would seem, the entire catalog without any weird time limits like MSN. Though covered in ads, the design of the site makes it easy to navigate and find videos. When the site changes names, it is also supposedly launching a redesigned version of the UI as well. For now, OPENhulu is the best way to watch Hulu content for anyone who can't get into Hulu itself.

We were, initially underwhelmed by Hulu. But by offering a high quality player, an easy to navigate web site, a large library of recent TV content, and the ability to embed videos, Hulu is beginning to win us over.

There is one thing that you can only get on Hulu: the guarantee that you're getting the most up-to-date library Hulu has to offer. Hulu's player also has at least one nifty feature that the embedded version doesn't offer, a dimmer that dims the rest of your browser screen to make the video stand out. Very cool.

For these reasons, Hulu itself unsurprisingly remains the best place to watch Hulu content.

Note: Hulu content is only available in the US, but some intrepid users have figured out how to trick the system and watch Hulu content outside the United States.