ORNIA – Bolstered by a multimillion-dollar advertising drive, efforts by Microsoft to replace Hotmail with Outlook.com seems to be making headway.
Since the new email service’s soft launching last summer, Outlook.com has garnered more than 400 million active users — 300 million of which were migrated over from Hotmail, Microsoft on Thursday reported.
This huge number includes some 125 million accounts that access email, contacts and calendar through mobile gadgets that use Exchange ActiveSync, Microsoft said.
Group program manager at Outlook.com, Dick Craddock, attributed the robust rates adoption to constant innovation in the company’s product line.
Craddock said that “the last two months have seen the release of a new, modern Outlook.com calendar, a refreshed Outlook.com application for the Android gadgets, two-factor authentication for (user accounts), and new international domains … plus the release of a preview of Skype calling.”
On Thursday, Microsoft said it was adding two more features to Outlook.com, including SMTP sending, which will make it easier for users to send mail from different email addresses, as well as deeper integration with SkyDrive.
Last week, Microsoft Advertising launched a new ad platform for Outlook.com called versaTiles.
The new units features flexible “tiles” that give brands the opportunity to engage in “deep storytelling,” as Jennifer Creegan, digital advertising experiences manager at Microsoft Advertising, told MediaPost.
Creegan also pointed out that versaTiles puts Outlook users “in the driver’s seat by offering different levels of engagement.
Source:pentagonpost.com
