MS modifies Hotmail Web service

eWeek.

These new tweaks, which are scheduled to roll out in the coming weeks, target what the company calls 'graymail', which include newsletters and updates from social networks and Web sites.

Hotmail's latest graymail-killing features include a new newsletter-filtering function, which is paired with a one-click ability to have Hotmail tell various companies that users no longer want to receive their daily or weekly e-mails.

According to the The Register, to clean existing mail, a Scheduled Cleanup function will delete e-mails older than three, 10, 30 or 60 days, and can scan through multiple e-mails from the same sender, and just keep the most recent one. Important e-mails, such as bank statements, can be automatically archived as well.

E-mail classification has been upgraded, so users can select their own e-mail categories and index to suit themselves, and file-management tools have been beefed up to allow in-file cleaning and folders within folders.

Important e-mails can also be pinned on the main inbox page to stop them from getting lost.

Windows Live corporate VP Chris Jones says Hotmail is the world's largest Web mail service, with approximately 350 million users, trailed by Yahoo Mail (310 million users) and Gmail (260 million users), according to Comscore numbers provided by Microsoft, reveals Cnet.

But in the US, Yahoo is No 1, with 96.6 million active users, followed by Gmail with 62.7 million users. Hotmail is third with 45.5 million users.