Microsoft Huge Hotmail Updates On The Way

The Hotmail team was hard a work over the summer, releasing a major update to Windows Live Hotmail that included a new design, faster inbox and many other cool features. Even though the update was released two months ago, the Hotmail team announced some more exciting changes, something that might just blow the competition away.

Shipment Tracking

First up on the changes is shipment tracking within your email. Hotmail will automatically detect the shipping tracking number and provide real-time shipping information. Once the update rolls out, users will be able to track USPS and Fedex shipments right from inside their email, without having to visit the shippers website. DHL and UPS are also supported, but will provide links to the shipper’s website for more detailed information.

Facebook Chat

Earlier this month, we posted information that Facebook Chat will soon be coming to Windows Live Hotmail, and now the Hotmail team is ready to roll out this major update. Users can already chat with Facebook friends through Windows Live Essentials 2011 and Windows Live Messenger for the iPhone.
Microsoft also mentioned that they will be making the signout button more noticeable for users to see, based on feedback from some users.

Attachment Upgrade

Windows Live Hotmail became the first email provider to allow up to 10GB of photos in a single email, by creating a new album inside of SkyDrive and connecting it with your email. This allows friends and family to share high resolution photos with one another. Hotmail users share more than 1.5 billion photos a month on Hotmail, and with the ever increasing demand, the Hotmail team is increasing total filesizes to 25MB per email. You’ll now be able to have larger attachments per email.

Dailymotion & Justin.tv

During the summer rollout, Hotmail announced you’ll be able to watch Hulu and YouTube videos right inside of an email. The next update rollout will now support videos from Dailymotion and Justin.tv.

Subfolders

The new Hotmail update will allow you to create subfolders in your inbox, so you can put folders in your folders (yo dawg yo). A great new feature for people wanting to stay organized, but have a massive list of folders in their inbox, now you’ll be able to separate your email using the Hotmail filters but keep a neat and tidy inbox.

Hotmail didn’t give an estimated time for the release, only saying they would be rolling out the update immediately. The process may take a few weeks to reflect on everyone’s account.

Access Facebook Chat Within Hotmail Now

Microsoft Hotmail has just introduced its new Social Media feature in Hotmail. Now hotmail users can chat with their facebook friends instantly within hotmail.

Just a few days after announcing social media functionality in the newest version of the Bing toolbar, Microsoft announced that the ability to access Facebook chat within Hotmail is now available in every part of the world that the social network reaches.

According to Microsoft Windows Blog news:


When we first announced the ability to chat with Facebook friends from Hotmail, we were only able to offer this to customers in six regions. Since then, we’ve been working with Facebook to increase availability, and a few weeks ago, we announced that the feature was available globally through Messenger. Today this is available around the world through Hotmail too. And while Gmail beat us to bringing their own chat into the inbox, we have now gone a step further and brought both our own chat and Facebook chat into your inbox. Starting now, we will be displaying notifications of this update in Hotmail.


Since announcing the availability of Facebook chat in Messenger worldwide two weeks ago, nearly 2.5 more million people connected their Facebook accounts to Windows Live, bringing the total to over 20 million customers. And with three out of four Hotmail customers using Facebook, we expect that many more people will want to take advantage of this feature, now that it’s available from your Hotmail inbox.

What do you think about this new chat feature? Do you use Hotmail Chat while checking out your E-mails??