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LiveSide (the independent Windows Live news blog) spotted that Windows Live Toolbar is now sporting a “Now released” tag. It’s a browser toolbar that rolls up a variety of convenient features including Windows Live Search and the Onfolio feed reader in one free package. Also related, Windows Live Gallery went into beta. The Gallery provides a library of Microsoft and third party “gadgets” that can be added-in to enhance other Windows Live services including the Toolbar.
But here’s a puzzle. Do you get the feeling that Windows Live marketing has gone AWOL since Martin Taylor’s disappearance? Windows Live OneCare and Windows Live Messenger got press releases when they shipped in May and June respectively (at which point Taylor left), but Windows Live Custom Domains and Windows Live Favorites just got posts in Microsoft blogs when they shipped in June, as did Windows Live Expo when it shipped in July. Now Windows Live Toolbar doesn’t even get a post in a Microsoft blog that I can find.
Admittedly, not all Windows Live offerings are of equal importance, but Windows Live Expo is going to do battle with craigslist for the lucrative classified ad market and Windows Live Toolbar is a control center for a number of important Windows Live features. You’d think Microsoft could pony up a few bucks for some real announcements and a little hoopla if Windows Live were really so important to the company’s future. Could the budget be a little tight, what with the competing demands for Vista, Office, Xbox 360, and Zune marketing, or is marketing just disorganized?
Update 7/26: Microsoft’s Dennis Cheung proved more adept than I at delving into Microsoft blogs. He notes that there was a post about the Toolbar release at Microsoft’s Virtual Earth blog and after my post above, Microsoft’s Live Search blog provided a nice introduction. It’s great that the teams are providing their own publicity since they seem to be the only ones doing it.
Via email, I also received a suggestion that perhaps Microsoft is saving their fireworks for a gala celebration when one of the bigger name Windows Live products ships, say Windows Live Search which has been promised shortly. That’s certainly a possibility, although hoarding all the good news leaves you open to complaints about “old news” when you finally get around to the combined launch. In any case, a combined launch is certainly the place to make up for earlier lost opportunities.
Yesterday at Microsoft’s Windows Live Expo blog:
Our free classified listing site has ‘graduated’ from the beta stage and is now a fully fledged Windows Live service. As part of this evening’s release you will notice that the site has received a significant make-over and we’ve added several new cool features. The other key piece of news is that we have created a UK beta version of Expo which will be available for internal consumption as of July 12th.
So it’s USA only for the moment and UK shortly. Expo is Microsoft’s Craigslist competitor with a social networking twist and is presumably a big deal, so you have to wonder why it gets announced with a blog post while the beta program got a press release. Betanews has more details including that Windows Live Expo had 1.2 million unique users last month.
(Via Tech Crunch) It’s Web real estate, of course, but Microsoft’s Ian McAllister lets us know that the sign is up at http://shopping.live.com/. There are some sparse details in the linked “help wanted” posting which reveal that they are building the “the largest structured commercial catalog in the world, ingesting data from hundreds of thousands of retailers” in “50+ international markets.”
Interestingly, the hiring is for the whole MSN Marketplaces team which includes Windows Live Expo and MSN Shopping as well as Windows Live Shopping. Are we having brand confusion yet? Since MSN Shopping reported last Holiday season they had 7,000 retailers (which was, in itself, admirable growth), the folks at Microsoft clearly have high hopes for their new venue.
Of course, Windows Live Shopping isn’t the only new store on the street with high hopes. Colin Barker at ZDNet UK reports on Google Base:
Google is hoping to take on the huge task of moving a significant portion of the European retail sector online.
The company is extending Google Base, its system for advertising and selling goods and services, into a full retail operation, it revealed this week.
Some industry analysts are sceptical about Google’s prospects and have dismissed Google Base as “just advertising”. Another analyst believes that Google Base’s true worth goes beyond just retail and that its “rounded, more complete, approach” will make life tough for companies like Amazon.com and eBay.
Tough for Windows Live Shopping as well, of course. And along with the shopping comes the paying which is pretty good business too, as eBay discovered with PayPal. TechCrunch shows what the kids from Mountain View are up to in that arena with an Exclusive Look At Google Payments. I’m sure they’ll all find the competition bracing.
Windows Live Expo, Microsoft’s beta classified ad service, has gotten new integration with MSN features according to a posting on the team blog:
Today, we’re thrilled to launch our integration with MSN Spaces. This integration allows you to post a free listing on Expo and have an abstract and thumbnail image displayed automatically on the front page of your MSN Space. Visitors to your Space can view abstracts from your different Expo listings and click directly to view more information and communicate with you via IM or anonymous messaging.
Here’s why we’re particularly excited: one of the reasons we built Expo was to provide an easy experience to share and view listings with those you trust: your friends. MSN Spaces captures this vision as a great communication experience among both friends and the broader web community. By posting a listing on Expo, your Space is updated, your MSN Messenger contact card is updated, and you gleam to your Messenger buddies. We hope that this automatic ‘promotion’ of your listing among those who share your interests provides the right kind of directed traffic to your listing.
Spaces, of course, is Microsoft’s free weblog service and Messenger is the Instant Messaging client. I’m still skeptical of the broad-based utility of the social aspects of Expo, but I always appreciate a clever hack.
