You may have read recently on TechCrunch that Live.com (MSN Search’s replacement) has now gone live. In fact Microsoft are busy at work rolling out a lot of new services and rebranded MSN services.

MSN Soapbox, essentially Microsoft’s YouTube clone, is under development as well. But obviously, for the time being at least, it’s still branded with the ‘MSN’ brand rather than taking up the new ‘Windows Live’ livery.

I’ve got another example of this inconsistent behaviour by Microsoft. UK 3G mobile phone provider, 3, are now advertising free ‘MSN Messenger’ on selected handsets (as an introductory offer). Obviously Microsoft are involved in this deal with 3, so why have they again chosen to plump for the older name? The desktop software is now called Windows Live Messenger, and although generally people still refer to it as simply ‘MSN’, why aren’t they pushing the name change harder?

Perhaps they want people to recognise the MSN brand still, but if so, why launch some stuff as Windows Live and leave some as MSN? They are obviously going to watn to rebrand the MSN service, so why not do it all at once, or run ads saying ‘Windows Live is the new MSN…’ or similar?

It seems a very strange idea in my eyes to use different brandings here and there if Microsoft really are serious about the rebranding of the MSN services (everything seems to point at full rebranding so far). So I’m really at a loss to understand these two moves. Someone, enlighten me.