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MSN launches personalised email IDs on Hotmail

Email users can now choose from 250 ‘personalised’ domain names for their email ID

MSN India has launched Cool Hotmail, a service where email users can choose from 250 domain names and create an email ID that best describes them. The domain names, placed in five categories, include delhirocks.in, clubdhoni.com, overworked.co.in, ilovebikes.in and leavemealone.in.

The email platform for Cool Hotmail is Windows Live Mail, which has been recently relaunched with 5GB storage and access to a 500MB online storage vault, Sky Drive. The company will also roll out its TVC in two days, with the punch line ‘No more same pinch’.

MSN launches personalised email IDs on Hotmail
Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday, Jaspreet Bindra, country manager, Online Services Business, Microsoft India, said, “The web is now becoming ‘my web’. Creating an identity for people is an evolution of the web, and that is what we are trying to do with Cool Hotmail.” Asked what the business model for the service is, Bindra said that the aim right now is to attract subscribers.

Samir Saraiya, product head, Windows Live Services, Microsoft India, adds, “As we evolve, we could segregate audiences according to the type of domain for more targeted advertising.” Subscribers with their own registered domain names can also use the Windows Live Hotmail platform. Saraiya says that this feature could be an opportunity for SMEs who could use the service to reduce infrastructure costs on email.

MSN India experimented with custom domains when it launched lokhandwalarocks.com for a suburb in Mumbai. Saraiya says that India is the first country where custom domains are being rolled out on a large scale and its success will decide the company’s plans to launch the service in other markets. This is the first such service launched by an email company in India

Apart from the TVC, Bindra said Cool Hotmail would be promoted on radio and on the Internet.

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