MSN apparently began rolling out its redesigned home page to some U.S. users, according to the BBC.
Here is a preview.
The redesigned home page has a cleaner, less-cluttered feel, and even the MSN logo takes on a sleeker look.
But, take a gander at the header on the current home page, with Airfares & Travel as the first category. The word "Airfares" in the alphabetical listing served to place Airfares & Travel at the top of the list. Lots of street cred there.
Here's what it looks like in the home page that is being replaced.
In the redesigned home page, making its debut, Airfares & Travel is now merely called Travel, but you won't find it without drilling down. Take a look at the new headers.
Travel has gone missing, secretly vacationing in some unknown destination.
The detailed listings of Airfare & Travel, Autos, Dating Music and others have given way to broader categories, including News, Entertainment and Lifestyle.
To find Travel -- Bing Travel, that is -- you'd have to mouse-over Lifestyle or More to get at it. Some users won't ever find it and may seek more travel-friendly pastures elsewhere.
After all, you can make an argument -- or some potential travel bookers may think -- that travel should be under Entertainment instead. Hey, if I'm lying on a beach in Tortola, baby that's Entertainment.
So there's some potential confusion and lack of visibility for the travel category in Microsoft's bow to a less-cluttered look and feel.
And, compare and contrast's MSN.com's positioning of travel with the placement of travel on its own Bing home page.
One of the exciting things about the Bing home page, from a travel standpoint, is that Travel is right up-front there as one of eight, prominent categories. The Bing home page looks like this:
MSN.com's repositioning of travel in its redesign from top of the heap on the soon-to-be gone home page to a semi-hidden position within Lifestyle and More in the redesigned home page could have big repercussions for Bing Travel.
After all, according to Compete Inc., Bing Travel gets 21.5% of its referral traffic from MSN.com, which is Bing Travel's most prolific referrer. MSN.com refers almost 10 times more traffic to Bing Travel than Google does.
So, MSN, is this any way to treat a subsidiary and the most ring-a-ding-ding retail category on the Web?