Microsoft is looking to “Re-Imagine email” in a transition of Hotmail into Outlook.com, a web based version of outlook that boasts a simpler and more connected email service.
Hotmail has been successful for Microsoft and still has millions of users worldwide. However, Microsoft felt that Hotmail needed a major update. Hotmail will now become something familiar, Outlook.

Many of us use email less then we used to mostly because of the recent popularity of social media sites like Facebook. Microsoft understands this trend and has responded by allowing you to connect to Facebook and Twitter.
Connecting Outlook.com with your Facebook or Twitter account will automatically update your address book to include all of your friends and family. You will also be able to instant message anyone who is also online with Facebook or Outlook.com, right from your inbox. Getting the latest update from a contact, as well as being able to see their profile picture, can be done just by opening an email from them.

An innovative feature that looks appealing is Sweep, a scheduled clean up of your inbox that will remove spam and other bulk emails for you on a regular basis. Outlook will also automatically categorize newsletters,social updates and photos for you.

Outlook.com will also contain free Word, Excel and PowerPoint web apps to better tie in with Office. You will also get 7 GB of storage with SkyDrive, which is Microsoft’s cloud application.

Aside from all of the nice features, the new Outlook is very clean and has a nice feel to it. I think Microsoft is taking steps in the right direction here as this will better integrate with Windows 8 when it becomes available.
For more information and a preview of the new Outlook.com, follow the link below.

Outlook