Telkom and Microsoft bring PlasaMSN to Life

After several months of rumors, PlasaMSN has finally gone live. PlasaMSN is a news portal that brings you curated content from multiple partners and works in a similar vein as Yahoo!'s portal. While Microsoft in other countries tend to partner with a media company to bring its news portal online, it decided to partner with Plasa.com in Indonesia, the Telkom subsidiary behind the struggling online store.

Despite having zero experience in delivering online news content, it seems that Plasa has recruited a number of media figures and editors to secure the contract with Microsoft.  One notable signing is Wicaksono, better known as Ndoro Kakung, formerly of Tempo Interaktif. This would be Plasa's second major deal with the Redmond-based company as it signed an agreement to use Live Mail to modernize its email service back in 2010.

Strangely enough, while PlasaMSN is live, Microsoft also still maintains MSN Indonesia served from its primary domain. The two sites are certainly different not just from the design but also content. Frankly, MSN's own site for Indonesia looks better than the Plasa effort. Given the partnership with Plasa however, it seems rather obvious that the existing MSN site will eventually be replaced by PlasaMSN, but for the moment, the two coexist on the same domain.

hat tip : erryfp