Microsoft kissing Hotmail goodbye

The company aims to draw users away from Gmail and Yahoo Mail

Microsoft on Tuesday began publicly previewing a new webmail service for consumers called Outlook.com that will eventually replace Hotmail.

Microsoft also expects that Outlook.com will draw people away from competing consumer webmail services like Google's Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

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With Outlook.com, Microsoft set out to "reimagine personal e-mail -- from the datacenter all the way to the user experience," wrote Microsoft official Chris Jones in a blog post.

Outlook.com features what Microsoft describes as "clean" and "intuitive" user interface that gives more prominence to messages and less to other elements, like headers and search boxes. It doesn't include display ads.

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With Exchange ActiveSync, Outlook.com accounts can be synchronized across a variety of devices, and it features native integration with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and, in the near future, Microsoft's own Skype.

This means that users can access content and notifications from those social media accounts within the Outlook.com interface.

Outlook.com also sorts messages of different types into separate buckets, so that e-mail from contacts, newsletter subscriptions, e-commerce notifications and social media content is arranged into different groups.

The new webmail service also includes Office Web Apps, the online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote along with the SkyDrive cloud storage service.

Once Outlook.com exits its test phase, it will replace Hotmail's user interface, although users will be able to retain their @hotmail.com, @live.com and @msn.com addresses as well as their contacts, messages, password and rules.

"While today's preview is just the start, Outlook.com is ready now to become your primary email service. We're expecting millions of people to try it out. Starting today, you can get an @Outlook.com email address, and we've also made it easy to get started with your current email address if you want to," Jones wrote.

Outlook.com is not to be confused with the Outlook email and calendaring PC application, nor with Outlook Web App, which gives Exchange users access to their accounts via a browser.

Facebook IPO stumbles out of the gate

Social network's stock price wavers in first hours of trading

The first hours of the social networking company's IPO got off to a shaky start today with the share price wavering around the $40 mark, never gaining the astronomical momentum that had been anticipated by many. Shortly after 2 p.m. ET, the stock price was hovering just under $41, less than $3 above its initial share price.

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"It's certainly not flying to unprecedented levels," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research. "This underscores the thesis that many investors are taking a wait-and-see approach."

He added that while many people may be surprised Facebook's stock price hasn't taken off yet, they really shouldn't be.
"I think it's surprising a lot of people, but I think it should have been expected," said Kerravala. "There are a lot of questions about Facebook.... How are they going to monetize mobile? Can [CEO Mark] Zuckerberg run a public company?"

Twenty-eight year-old Zuckerberg started the day by ringing the Nasdaq opening bell from company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

After that, though, there were a few hitches.

Trading was supposed to start at 11 a.m. ET, but the Nasdaq delayed it by about half an hour in order to handle the flood of buy and sell orders that were coming through for Facebook's stock.

Once trading actually began, the stock started out strong, trading at $42 per share, $4 above the official offering price of $38 the company set Thursday.

However, instead of rising from there, Facebook's share price began to fizzle, and dropped to below $39 just 20 minutes after trading began. Once the price hit $38, about 10 to 15 minutes later, the company's underwriters stepped in to bolster it and hold the price floor at $38, reported the Wall Street Journal.

TV commentators and online headlines began using words like "underperform" and "disappointing."

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said people may be jumping the gun. He contends that Facebook's stock price is hovering around where it started this morning because it was priced appropriately.

"I can say that if your IPO doesn't go up or down very much, then you priced it right," he added. "At this point, it's all about perception and expectation. The stock price is just a noise meter."

Regardless of the ups and downs the stock is going through today, there's been a huge amount of interest and excitement around the event.

As trading began, people were standing around Times Square in New York City, staring up at giant screens showing Facebook's stock numbers. At the same time, Twitter momentarily staggered under the crush of tweets about the IPO.

As noteworthy as this day has been for many in the financial and tech industry, it's been a tough day for other social networking companies.

The Wall Street Journal reported soon after trading of Facebook's stock began that LinkedIn's stock price was down 2.6% and Groupon was down 6%. Pandora also was down, dropping 5%.

Zynga, though, might have fared the worst. The online gaming company's share price toppled a full 13%, landing at $7.17, according to MarketWatch . Trading on that stock was halted, later reinstated, then halted for a second time.

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