Microsoft is planning to unveil a reinvention of its email service later today.
The software giant is holding two events in the U.S. that promise to detail Hotmail’s new performance, spam and security improvements. Microsoft’s event invitation hints that the company may also unveil features that “stack up against the competition.” Microsoft has not revealed any further information about what the company plans to unveil later today.
Microsoft has made a series of improvements to its Hotmail interface and feature set over the past year. The company introduced a hacking alert system in July alongside a block of common passwords. Microsoft blocked common passwords like password, 123456, ilovecats and gogiants to better protect its users.
Hotmail has also gained a number of Outlook-like features over the past 12 months. Hotmail now supports a number of new keyboard shortcuts that are identical to Outlook. Ctrl+N will create a new message and ctrl+enter will allow Hotmail users to send their message. Microsoft also added in Yahoo and Gmail shortcuts too. Microsoft’s Hotmail Inbox view was also updated with a mini-calendar view similar to Microsoft’s Outlook product.
The software giant celebrated 15 years of Hotmail back in July and revealed that the service now attracts over 360 million unique users each month.
- 5.5 billion spam messages filtered each day
- 14 billion photos sent through photo mail since launch
- Over 40 million people use Office Web Apps in Hotmail each month
- Sweep feature has swept hundreds of millions of messages from Inboxes.
- Over 3 million email aliases already created
- 5 million people chat with Facebook friends via Hotmail
- 200 million Active View emails delivered last month
Microsoft is holding two events, one in San Francisco and another in New York on Monday. WinRumors will be reporting live from the event later today. Microsoft’s New York event kicks off at 3PM EST (see other time zones). Stay tuned for further details on Microsoft’s new Hotmail improvements.