Microsoft's 'New Busy' Hotmail has lie-in Microsoft has confessed that the rollout of the latest version of Hotmail is taking longer than customers might have expected, especially given the fanfare that accompanied the release. The software giant confirmed yesterday that only one per cent of its 360 million-strong user base has what it describes as “Wave 4” of the …
Of that "360 million strong user base" how many of those users are active?
I have a hotmail account, I use it for one thing - spam catching, whenever any online (or offline) service asks for my email address that's the one they get. I don't use it for real email, ever. I check it maybe once a week and if ever I start to get mail into it that I think is important, the sender gets given my real email address.
So the snazzy new design is of no interest to me at all. As hotmail was one of the first wide-spread free web mail services, I expect there are a lot of dormant accounts on it - people set them up there and then moved on to something better over time. Other people probably use it in the same way as I do, and yet more people probably have accounts that were set up there for a laugh (e.g. xenagoddessoffire@hotmail.com or iamthewalrus@hotmail.com). The only person I know that uses a hotmail account in earnest actually works for MS
So really - does it matter? How many people will really be affected?
PS - I made up those two addresses but will not be surprised even a tiny little bit if it turns out they exist
"WARNING: Your computer is under spec. To get the best performance from the new ultra fantastic Hotmail please ensure your computer has a minimum spec of a 2.8Ghz Quad Core processor, 8Gb RAM, and a DirectX 11 compatible graphics card. Your operating system should be running Windows 7 at a minimum. This will bring it in line with Microsofts other products. Thank you".
/Joke obviously.
I use Gmail, but have a Hotmail account for spam.
Someone asked wtf the newbusy (newspeak init) is all about, I had no idea, I even said "it would make sense to run the campaign if there had been a difference made to hotmail, I just don't get it!" And if I don't get it (10 years in IT) wtf do the users think?!
MS are worse than bad at marketing, advertising a service before it launches is prolly one of their more honest mistakes, using Hotmail does in fact suck time from your day and make you more busy!
“When we roll out new software, we typically don't get the budget or time for the proper internal mini-rollout like we wanted because the test budget hasn't got room for it and the marketing folks jumped the gun. So we have to shove that into the deployment schedule and budget."
There, I fixed that for you.
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