Microsoft Start, a news service rolling together the firm's MSN and Microsoft News services, went live on Tuesday. Characterised by the corporation as delivering "the content you care about, simplified and reinvented," Microsoft Start will be made available via multiple digital means including feeds straight into the Windows UI. Hopefully having multiple 'Start' things in the Windows UI (Start Menu, Start Button, and Microsoft Start) won't confuse anyone.
In its blog post, Microsoft tries to pitch its new Microsoft Start news service as being a catch-all news destination, meaning you won't have to waste time checking out various news sites, even more nice ones. Thus, the Microsoft Start news feed is personalised, and sourced from 'premium publishers', mixing breaking news with nuggets of info tailored for your interests. It uses the news personalisation engines of its previous news sites and adds the latest advancements in AI and machine learning, as well as human moderation, to create a news mix for you. Overall, Microsoft's buzz word marketers want you to "Start with the information you need. Stay for the content you love."
In order to cover as many digital news consumption vectors as possible, Microsoft Start is available now via the following routes:
- As a standalone website (available on Microsoft Edge and Chrome) – MicrosoftStart.com
- As a mobile app on both Android and iOS
- From the News and Interests experience on the Windows 10 taskbar
- From the Widgets experience in Windows 11
- From the Microsoft Edge new tab page
This wouldn't be a proper Microsoft news story without some non sequitur, or bug, to talk about. Firstly, I must comment that Microsoft isn't doing away with the 25-year-old+ MSN news. It is keeping MSN available for some reason – to serve people of habit, and/or as a backup position in case Microsoft Start isn't well received, perhaps. Secondly, it has been noticed that the new Microsoft Start app for Android has trashed the Surface Duo split screen UI niceties that users of this device waited so long to be implemented. Windows's Central editor Daniel Rubino quipped that "even Microsoft has to beg Microsoft for Duo support".
HEXUS readers, please share your verdict on Microsoft Start as a web news service, and as a feed which connects so closely to Windows.
