Coming soon: A Brand New MSN UK

I want to tell you about an exciting re-launch of the MSN site in the UK. This project has been my big focus since I joined MSN UK as executive producer in April after 15 years working at the BBC - where I was editor of the News and Sport sites. I came here to help make MSN the best site in the business, not only looking better but also working better for you every day.

We had a very busy summer at MSN HQ. The team has been working hard on improving MSN and we have been listening to your feedback about what you want from your time online. We have looked at the comments you send us and have run additional surveys to look in-depth at the things you love about MSN and the things you would like us to improve. We have been reviewing new services, designing new features and we are close to revealing the all-new MSN to you very soon!

But for now I wanted to let you know about some of the improvements we will be making. And I will give you more details over the coming days as our exciting re-launch on Thursday 17 November approaches:

We are updating our design It will look quite familiar so you can still find the things you love most, but it will be cleaner and simpler so that our top stories have an even greater impact and our new features and services really stand out.

We will be ramping up our real-time coverage

We have been trialing  some of our new services extensively over the past few months, so you will already be used to some of the improvements we are making to MSN. Have you noticed, for example, more and more live coverage on MSN recently? We’ve covered top news events such as the Royal Wedding and the political developments in the Middle East with new real-time services to bring you the very latest developments as soon as they happen.

We do the same at the weekends with our coverage of live football with text commentary, data and scores, as well as in entertainment with real-time updates on your favourite reality TV shows. These services have proved hugely popular so we will be continuing them and adding even more breaking news, rolling coverage of major news and sport events and lots of extra video. We will also keep you up to date with what is popular around the web with a new Trending feature.

We are expanding our in-house team. Did you know we now have about 70 editors and journalists on the MSN UK team, working around the clock? We also have great contributors such as Vicky Butler-Henderson in MSN Cars, England World Cup rugby star James Haskell in MSN Sport and fashion expert Louise Roe in MSN Lifestyle. This combination of a larger in-house team and big name writers enables us to bring you original stories and features from experts in their field every day that you won’t find anywhere else. Our team posts new content to the MSN website throughout the day and the relaunched site will make it easy for you to find this brilliant content.

We’ll be providing more exclusives. You will see more top interviews with A-list stars and other exclusive content every week, bringing you closer to the news you need and the entertainment you love.

We are keeping all the popular stuff you’ve told us you really like

We’ve tried hard to make improvements where they are needed and we have listened to what you like about MSN, so that all your favourites on the homepage will still be a glance or click away - such as the preview of your Hotmail inbox, your local weather, your horoscopes and finding what you want on the web with Bing search.

I would like to thank you for visiting MSN UK and for giving us the feedback which we will continue to read and act upon.

I’ll be adding more to this blog over the coming days including some sneak peeks at what we will be releasing to you soon, so please come back to find out more as we move closer to launching our new improved site.

And keep letting me know what you really want from MSN.

So hold on to your hats, the next few weeks should be fun!

Best wishes

Pete Clifton

PS

Have you seen the new MSN trailer?