Earlier this week, we discussed how Gmail’s new “Priority” feature tracks engagement to judge what emails are most important, and then prioritizes them.

We also discussed how MailChimp is using engagement to decide which emails to clean from our senders’ lists.

Yesterday, we learned that Hotmail is also tracking user interaction within their inbox in order to determine which emails to throw away, and which to keep:

Hotmail Using New Metrics to Consider Inbox Placement by George Bilbrey on MediaPost

Reading that article from George made me realize I’m way, waaaaay behind on my Hotmail knowledge. I haven’t checked out their interface for ages, except for when I glance at our Inbox Inspection reports (and skimming the occasional article about their “sweep” feature).

I guess it’s because my domain performance stats on all my campaign reports have been showing this trend over the years:

But they’re still HUGE. So I setup a Hotmail account today, and at first glance, it’s kind of neat. I like that they have smart folders for shipping notifications, photo storage, and Office Docs (makes sense). They say something about organizing your social network notifications too, though I haven’t found that in my first few minutes of testing here.

If you haven’t checked out Hotmail in a while, you can catch up on their new features at the Windows Live blog.

Competition between Microsoft and Google is good for all of us. I couldn’t help but notice Microsoft’s video, and compare it with Gmail’s. Wondering which one our readers like better:

Microsoft’s video:

Gmail’s video: