Monday, November 23, 2009

Evolution of MSN.com 11-24-09

I have recently searched through Archive.org to see how certain websites have evolved. This entry is about the Microsoft Network website, better known as MSN.com.

MSN.com 1996


Note: I had cropped this image slightly to save space, because there was nothing to the right except extra space.

At its beginnings, MSN had a simple design with ad hoc links inserted within. All websites and pages were simple back in the mid-1990s, and MSN was no different.


MSN.com 2008


Twelve years later, MSN has since evolved into a more complex website with more topically-organized links and more services, such as news, video and weather.

MSN.com 2009

In 2009, MSN.com has gained more color in its design. There is a wealth of information on the site, which can create a poverty of attention(Herbert Simon, "Attention Economy"). It seems to suffer from the same problem that Yahoo!(see Yahoo! post) had: starting off simple, then becoming more complex. There is a wealth of information on the site, which can create a poverty of attention("Attention Economy"). My belief is that "less can be more". Google(see Google post) has less on its main page, but its focus was the search engine itself, which can provide millions of results at a time.

Works Cited

"Attention economy -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 25 Nov. 2009. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy].

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