MSN Launches msnNOW Social Trends App on Facebook, Web and Mobile

One of the Web's oldest portals, MSN, is about to dive headfirst into one of the Internet's hottest trends: Social Media.

No, Microsoft, which runs MSN, is not launching its own social network. Instead, the 17-year-old content destination is unveiling a new social reader, msnNOW, on Facebook, the Web and in a new web-based mobile interface.

The initiative is actually two components. According to MSN General Manager Bob Visse, a team of 20 editors will use a new Demand Dashboard to measure velocity and volume of trending topics across Facebook, Twitter, the Bing search engine and BreakingNews.com (a joint MSN/NBC venture).

Stories that are trending will appear on msnNOW in a constantly updating "Biggest Movers" box. In addition, a team of editors will select topics and stories from among those social (and search) trends and create 100 word write-ups for posts that will appear in msnNOW's What's Trending homepage.

The page, which will look pretty much the same on the web and in the new Facebook app, will feature a large main story and a grid of other popular stories below. Visse described it as a "river of real-time content". Within each area, reader will find small icons for Twitter, Facebook and BreakingNews.com. The presence of each will indicate on which social networks the stories and topics are trending.

These are not icons for sharing these posts, but Visse promised that sharing options would be obvious on the Web site and in the Facebook app, where there will be opportunities to share and comment.

Along with each MSN-created post, readers will find related Bing search terms, Tweets and other content. Not every topic or story will get an MSN write-up. For those, What's Trending will link to a Bing result, which will also offer a link directly to the original content source. "We give the best of the web regardless of where that content or hot story originated from," Visse told us.

Visse explained that MSN is targeting a younger "always socially connected consumer who lives an online lifestyle for information gathering and seeking." That may mean that some of the trending content will be a little edgier than what you traditionally see on the portal. It's all designed to start a conversation. Even the design has the younger demo in mind. It's image-centric, with what Visse calls "short, pithy headlines."

It's also one of the first times that MSN has launched a new product across three separate platforms at once and, as Visse noted, it's the first time MSN "has done anything interesting with the Facebook social reader experience." msnNOW, however, will not launch with Google+ integration, though Visse said Microsoft is open to tracking volume and acceleration on the still young social network at a future date.

Visse calls the msnNOW project a "transformative experience for MSN." Even so, the design is still decidedly MSN-centric across all platforms. Visse contends that while msnNOW is not yet a Metro design (the cubist-look Microsoft is painting across virtually all of its interfaces), msnNOW's "component-like design is not a big leap to get a Metro-like design."

The intention with the current look is for a really good, super-easy-to-use interface. The mobile interface, in particular, is designed for easy touch and swipe consumption across multiple mobile devices (the mobile web site should work well on the latest iOS, Windows Phone and Android browsers).

Though MSN currently enjoys a reported 125 million monthly visitors, with 75 million visiting the MSN portal homepage each month, msnNOW will not take over that hot destination. Visse told Mashable that msnNOW will have a hard and visible link from the MSN homepage and msnNOW content that does make the main homepage will feature msnNOW artwork and insignias.

msnNOW is an interesting bet for Microsoft, the big software company without its own big social network. Can it be the aggregator instead of the creator? And will content and media companies like the 100-word write-ups — or will they think such stories are cannibalizing their content?

Visse, though, has other concerns. "I'm waiting to see how it works out. Did we connect with the younger demo in the way I think we're going to? Are the edit choices and the way we package them together interesting and exciting for users?" All good questions and Visse acknowledges that he won't know the answers until they launch the product.

What do you think of msnNOW? Check it out and then give us your critique in the comments below.