March 1, 2006

Windows Live Expo Classified Ads Service Launched

The Microsoft folks announced the launch of Windows Live Expo. Windows Live Expo is a "dynamic social listing service that allows members to find and sell items, discover information, and meet other parties in their area." Sounds a lot to me like Craigslist. Gary Price has a summary where he lists down the feature sets.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:09 AM | Permalink

January 13, 2006

Windows Live Expo (aka Freemont) from Microsoft Now Has Info Site and Blog

In late November and then again in December, we posted (as did many others) a couple of items about Microsoft developing a classified advertising/social networking site code named: Freemont.

I just noticed that what's now known as Windows Live Expo has a publicly accessible info site (includes a screen cap) and a blog are now online.

A link to register for the Live Expo beta list is also available.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:17 PM | Permalink

December 14, 2005

All About Microsoft's Fremont: Product Manager Interviewed

About 10 days ago, the web was buzzing with news of Microsoft's classified ad service code named Fremont. Zachary Rodgers from Clickz, sat done with Garry Wiseman, the product manager of this yet to be publicly released service for a Q&A interview.

Here's one exchange from the interview, the one that many have been asking, about Fremont being Microsoft's version of Google Base.

From the interview: Q. Fremont is perhaps inevitably being called an answer to Google Base. Is that what it is?

A. We're really flattered. The fact that people think we could put together an enterprise scaling classified service in two weeks? I'd love to say we did. And my developers' egos are going to be even more inflated. We had no idea about Google Base. We were as surprised as anybody. We had no inside information.

Almost immediately Danny was aware of why a comparison between the two services wasn't a good idea. See his post: More On Microsoft Classifieds Service -- And Why Comparing To Google Base Doesn't Make Sense.

FFAF (Fast Facts about Fremont) + Concept for Fremont came after Wiseman came to work at after moving from UK. He learned about an internal database of classified listings (you name it, it's listed) only available to MS employees, it handles about 5,000 or 6,000 active listings. + UI is a major concern in development. Wiseman says, "I've spent a lot of time to make sure you can list an item in less than a minute. We wanted to make the barrier to listings as low as possible. I always use my mom as the example." So many people use their mom as an example, me too! + Service also includes use of AJAX and RSS feeds. + Launch date? Being very vague. None given. + Monetized by ads. + International versions of Fremont will also be rolled out.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:38 PM | Permalink

December 1, 2005

More On Microsoft Classifieds Service -- And Why Comparing To Google Base Doesn't Make Sense

More on the forthcoming Microsoft classified ads service is coming out, with some good remarks on why Microsoft's service may be more suited to classified searching than Google Base -- though as I'll explain, Google Base isn't what people should be using to measure Google's entry into the classified listings space.

Why Microsoft?s classifieds service will be better than Google Base from Charlene Li at Forrester has her talking about what's she's seen so far from Microsoft and how it's more suited to specialty classified searching.

Microsoft tests classifieds service from News.com and Microsoft tries classifieds from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer also give more details on how the system came to be, with Microsoft adamant it's not an instant Google Base clone, plus how it is designed specifically for classified ads.

I agree with Charlene. The Microsoft system probably will be better for classified ad searches, since it's specifically built for that. But comparing Google Base to any specialized search service is missing the point.

Google Base is, as I wrote before, the master way Google wants to accept content of all type. I don't expect that many people will really be turning to Google Base for specialized searching, however. Instead, as content of particular types grows, we'll see more spin-offs.

In other words, Google Base will help power a future Google Classifieds, a Google Jobs, a Google Housing, perhaps a Google Auctions and so on. These specialized services, standalone sites -- like Google's shopping search engine Froogle -- will have more refined features to help with the specific searching task you're doing.

In other words, it's not Google Base versus Microsoft Fremont or Craigslist. It's Google Classifieds (when it comes) versus Microsoft Fremont and Craigslist. That's when the comparisons really will begin in earnest.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:41 AM | Permalink

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