Two new Windows Live services entered beta testing toward the end of 2005: a classified advertising service and a search and local mapping service. While potentially valuable to end users, the services add to confusion over Microsoft's consumer online strategy, which is currently split between the Windows Live and MSN brands, with no clear difference between the two. In particular, Windows Live Local overlaps with several other MSN services, and it's not clear how these services will evolve or merge.

Rapid-Fire Development

Introduced in Nov. 2005, Windows Live is the brand name for a set of consumer online services that are currently in beta testing. Most of these services are rebranded MSN services—for example, Windows Live Mail is the next version of Hotmail—but a handful of them are new. One goal of Windows Live is to prove that Microsoft can match the rapid pace of development exhibited by Web companies such as Google, and mere weeks after the initial Windows Live launch, Microsoft announced plans for two additional services.

Windows Live Classifieds. Currently in an invitation-only beta for Microsoft employees, Windows Live Classifieds (code-named Fremont) allows users to post classified advertisements or bulletin board listings. Fremont is similar to the popular craigslist service, which is 25% owned by eBay and claims about 6 million new listings per month. However, Microsoft hopes to differentiate its service in several ways.

Most notably, users will be able to limit the number of users who see their advertisements—for example, they may post advertisements only to users on their MSN Messenger contact list, or people within the same e-mail domain (such as coworkers). Although restricting the audience for an advertisement would seemingly reduce its chance of success, Microsoft believes that these limitations could eliminate the hassle for sellers while protecting their privacy—for example, a user could bring an item into work and offer it for sale to all coworkers, rather than allowing strangers to visit their home. Similarly, certain types of postings, such as requests for babysitters or roommates, may be better suited to a trusted audience. Fremont will also allow advertisers to publish their locations on a map.

The service will enter a public beta in early 2006 and launch in the first half of the year. Microsoft intends to earn money by selling contextual advertisements (for example, users browsing apartment listings might see advertisements for home furnishing stores) and premium listings (for example, users may be able to post extra photographs for a small fee).

Windows Live Local is a mapping service that Microsoft began beta testing in summer 2005 under the brand name "Virtual Earth." The service allows users to enter an address, location (e.g., city name), business name, or business category (e.g., "Chinese restaurants in Seattle") and see the results on a map or satellite photograph.

In conjunction with the rebranding, Microsoft has added some new features to the service. For example, users can now see some locations as a low-altitude "Bird's Eye" photograph taken from a 45-degree angle, get directions for travel between two points simply by right-clicking on their locations on a map, and annotate a particular map and send these annotations via e-mail or post it instantly to their MSN Space blog. Eventually, users will be able to expose these layers through Live.com—for example, users could search for "Matt Rosoff's restaurant recommendations" on a map of Seattle.

While Windows Live Local has some potentially interesting features, it was buggy at launch—for example, annotations were arbitrarily truncated when posted or sent via e-mail. More problematically, Windows Live Local overlaps with an array of similar Microsoft services for consumers, including MSN Maps and Directions, MSN Local Search, MSN Search Near Me, and Streets and Trips desktop software, all of which have different features, interfaces, and (in most cases) data. According to Erik Jorgensen, the general manager in charge of Microsoft's mapping businesses, the company plans to rationalize these products over the next year—some will be eliminated and the remainder will share the same back-end data and have a similar interface. In the meantime, however, this confusion may give the edge to Google Local, which offers many of the same functions in a single, easily navigable location.

Resources

Windows Live Local is at local.live.com.

A list of Windows Live services is at ideas.live.com. A link to Windows Live Classifieds will be added to this page when the service becomes publicly available.

Windows Live is detailed in "Services Emerge Under 'Live' Brand" on page 25 of the Dec. 2005 Update.

MSN Local Search is discussed in "Localized Search Revamped" on page 25 of the Aug. 2005 Update.

Virtual Earth is covered in "Free Mapping Site to Be Overhauled" on page 31 of the July 2005 Update.