I don't think I can come close to beating Kara Swisher's headline at All Things Digital, "Is Wonderwall Gonna Be the One That Saves MSN?"
So I'll just cut to the chase: in a move that seems to be way, way, way out in left field, Microsoft's MSN division has partnered with media company BermanBraun to launch an entertainment news site called Wonderwall.
Geared toward a slightly more highbrow breed of entertainment fan than the Perez Hilton set, Wonderwall primarily aggregates content from other entertainment sites but has an editorial team spearheaded by pop-culture veteran Alex Blagg. (He's on Twitter, natch.)
The launch of Wonderwall comes right before Sunday's Grammy Awards ceremony. It also happens to be timed perfectly to fit two high-profile celebrity scandals, the Michael Phelps up-in-smoke fiasco and the Christian Bale audio freakout.
So--why? Well, big tech players seem to want to have an in-house celebrity news hub, for one reason or another. Time Warner's AOL has the hugely successful TMZ, Yahoo has OMG (and indeed, the interface looks a bit like OMG), and Google has...um...the "entertainment" section of Google News.
And despite this whole "advertising recession" thing, we've seen big tech companies increasingly investing in ad-supported content. Perhaps as blog networks find themselves strapped for cash and print media companies find themselves smacking into financial icebergs, the tech companies see a potential gap in the market.
AOL rolled up all its content properties into a conglomeration called MediaGlow recently. We can only wonder if MSN's Wonderwall is the start of something similar in Redmond.
An e-mail snafu has led to the leak of Microsoft's decision to shutter its MSN Groups service, according to LiveSide.net. It's not a surprise, as MSN Groups was one of the last vestiges of Microsoft's Web services strategy pre-Windows Live.
MSN Groups will be closing on February 21, 2009. It'll be replaced with a new service, Windows Live Groups, which debuts on November 17.
Here's the catch: The LiveSide post indicates MSN Groups will not be migrating to Windows Live Groups; the new Windows Live service will be different enough so that the transition wouldn't be a clean one. Instead, the LiveSide post says that existing MSN Groups will transition to community site Multiply--in other words, Multiply is effectively acquiring MSN Groups from Microsoft.
Representatives from Multiply, which said earlier this month that it has reached 10 million registered users, confirmed the news. Microsoft representatives released a longer statement: "It is true that we are planning to close the MSN Groups service on February 21, 2009 and will offer you the opportunity to move your group to our new partner service, Multiply. We understand the importance of keeping your group together, so we partnered with Multiply to create a migration process that moves your group to their service to preserve your online community and its history.
This post was updated at 4:30 p.m. PT with comment from Microsoft.
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