Thursday, November 3, 2011

New Hotmail Features for Social Networking – Hotmail Sign In

Those who have had an account with Hotmail since its early days know that there has rarely been a groundbreaking update until the year 2010 when Microsoft released some new Hotmail features for this generation. A Hotmail sign in shows that there have been major changes to the email features since Hotmail was rebranded as MSN Hotmail by its buyer – Microsoft.Hotmail started off as the hot item on the market but it is hard to understand why they sat on their laurels after the arrival of competition from its rivals, Yahoo Mail and Gmail. The new changes in the modern Hotmail email service are meant to improve the email panel by adding social media interaction tools and improving the filter system and document management. The current Hotmail panel has rich web 2.0 features that allow people to chat with friends online, add profile pictures and see status updates. You can see who is online as well as accept friend requests or add contacts.
There is no doubt that MSN Hotmail cannot afford to be left behind by its competitors in this age of fast changing technology and life styles. A Hotmail sign in should give the user a new experience that sets them apart from other email services. Many new users have trouble signing into their accounts as the latest web browsers like Firefox add more advanced security features to their frequently updated systems. Websites like MSN Hotmail are also focused on increasing security on their email systems, and thus as the technology increases, it brings its pros and cons in the process. A new feature might affect other features, and prevent them from working properly. It is no surprise to find that signing into Hotmail may not be as easy as before whenever new features are introduced. These Hotmail log in problems are not only attributed to new updates of the email service, but they are also caused by numerous other factors. Old and new Hotmail users alike have to learn more as the services become updated. Referring to outdated Help Sections for Hotmail might not help as the information will not work for new Hotmail versions.

MSN Hotmail is hot on the heels of speeding giants like Gmail neck on neck. You might have noticed that Hotmail is giving its users more storage space, increased spam control and improved interactions. These three aspects are very important. You might think email services should be offering less storage space as the number of email accounts increases, but this is not the case. There are new technologies that are being used like cloud computing that allow for expansion of space without increasing costs.Hotmail has millions of users worldwide, and Microsoft can effectively handle any expansion. The need for more space is more apparent today than ever before. With the popularity of social networking sites, people are sharing millions of files online today and uploading pictures on a daily basis. Open social is taking the internet by storm. You can imagine the amount of server space that is required to store the ever-increasing amount of data in the webspace.Only the best email services in the world can afford to provide free services to millions of people while boosting their servers as well. To maintain the servers alone on a monthly basis would require thousands of dollars, which would be footed by the users, but email companies like MSN Hotmail are offering their service free of charge to the masses. Not to mention that these popular email services like Hotmail are providing top notch service, that is by far better than most paid email services.

One of the major challenges facing email providers today is spam control. When Hotmail launched as MSN Hotmail, there were major improvements in the Hotmail features for fighting spam. There is no doubt that Hotmail has one of the most robust spam filter systems. This is a feature that has caused many people to switch to Hotmail.When you sign into Hotmail, you will rarely come across junk email that you did not solicit or subscribe to. The new Hotmail is a mean spam killing machine. Spam is as old as the internet, considering that the internet is a free space for every Jack and Jill. A lot of spam emanates from marketing efforts on the internet.Indeed, you cannot separate spam from internet marketing – bad marketing practices. A spammer is like an insurance agent who talks about his insurance products everywhere he goes, at work, in the church, at funerals, at a club, at sport events and at home. This is the kind of seller who goes around sticking promotional posters at each and every pin board in town, even at prohibited places. You can imagine what a nuisance this can be. Most email users hate spam, and the ability to beat spam is now a selling point for many email providers and online forums.Naturally,we want our email inbox to be filled with emails that we care about, emails that are important to us, and not littered with unsolicited email campaigns, fishing emails and scams. If you have been struggling with spam, then the new MSN Hotmail might be a solution you are looking for. The free Hotmail email service is as good as the paid the version. Most paid email services will charge you a monthly fee for spam protection and you might not like this if you are a small businessman.

Hotmail is keeping up with the new generation. This is evidenced by its cool social networking features on its email service. Conversations can be threaded and there are inbuilt chats that show your status online. A wide range of richly built multimedia is available and the interface has a cool web 2.0 design. Users can chat via mobile phone as well. Whether you have a Blackberry or Nokia cellphone, you can use your platform to chat on MSN Hotmail.These days, people will not take your website seriously if you do not have web 2.0 communication features. People are spending more time on the internet, chatting with their friends from home, while travelling or attending meetings. The need for instant messaging cannot be overemphasized for our fast paced and busy lifestyles. Microsoft Hotmail provides free chat services. You do not need any credit to chat with your contacts online.

While Hotmail social features are not so amazing because of a lack of real social features like news feeds and other Facebook-like features, the ability to share photos online and chat with friends are enough for most people. It is safe to say people do not need another Facebook.Email providers like Yahoo and Gmail have experimented with social features, but these have not taken off very well. Not many people use these features. For example, Yahoo has a social feature in the name of ‘Yahoo Pulse’ and Google has ‘Google Buzz’. You might have signed in and out of these two email services for many months without noticing any of these social features. Yahoo bought Xoopit to add social features into its services and Gmail makes use of Etacts.This suggests that pouring your investment in acquiring products that are not aligned with your core service might not be a good idea. Let Facebook be Facebook and Yahoo be Yahoo. When people think of Facebook, they think of social networking. When people think of Yahoo, they think of email.

Some tech observers fantasize about the future where email inboxes can be converted into applications. These observers suggest that email inboxes should be applications where messages are dynamically exchanged without opening more than one window on the browser. This would really be an interesting evolution for email services like MSN Hotmail.These tech observers claim that Hotmail may be going towards this direction in the future. The Hotmail Active View is a tip in this speculation. In this case, the U.S.P.S. tracking code becomes an application that contains messages. Basic edits for PowerPoint, Excel and Word docs will be supported and already Hotmail in conjunction with Facebook has launched an editing website DOCS.COM for online document management.

Microsoft has some added 6 unique and interesting features to Hotmail. The new Hotmail features are as follows:

1 – Exchange ActiveSync which works on mobile platforms
2 – A user can view all messages from a particular sender by clicking the name
3 – The Sweep feature that deletes all emails from a selected sender and blocks all future emails.
4 – A sidebar for Bing where users can add information from the internet. Pictures and Google Maps can also be added on the sidebar. The content that you add on the sidebar can be used in your emails.
5 – The ability to embed YouTube videos as well as videos from other sites like Hulu.
6 – A slideshow feature with rich media that creates slideshows of pictures from sent emails and Flickr.

The Hotmail Slideshow feature is a cool tool for photo sharing and it allows maximum sizes for attachments. The maximum size of images that can be attached in emails is about 10 Gigs. This is really a huge amount of data, thanks to cloud hosting on SkyDrive.When a person receives photos, they are supposed to click on the photo URLs.You do not need to be signed into Hotmail.The Silverlight application is required to see the pictures online in full animated form. If you do not have the Silverlight app installed, then you will see the pictures but not with the same quality. As an alternative, the photo recipient can directly download the attachments. If you are downloading the attachment, then you need to be logged in your email to download the pictures. You can invite friends and other people to tag the photos or upload their own photos. To sign in, they should use their Windows Live ID. Pictures are stored in SkyDrive cloud servers where they are deleted after 3 months from the date of posting. The storage period can be extended indefinitely, so you have control over the pictures.

Many people will save the pictures to their computer if they are worthwhile. However, for other pictures, many people will just view them once and forget them. After one three months, you would have totally forgotten about the emails. On MSN Hotmail, over 50% of attachments consist of pictures. If you want your attachments to stay indefinitely without extending the storage period, then this might not be a good option for you. Not everyone will be happy with the 3 months expiration period.

To take your social networking a step further with MSN Hotmail, you have to check out the new version of Windows Live Messenger. This product has not been widely featured, but it makes connecting on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace a very enjoyable experience. You can connect on these social networking sites from your Hotmail account or home page. Take a Hotmail Sign In today to start the experience.

No comments:

Post a Comment