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When Windows Live Spaces launched last night, I was curious to see what kind of marketing Microsoft put behind it, since I was commenting just a week ago (after the “stealth” launch of Windows Live Toolbar) that you couldn’t prove that Windows Live was particularly important to Microsoft based on the minimal marketing attention they seemed to be devoting to it. Well the good news is that Windows Live Spaces merited a press release that was picked up widely in the press and that Microsoft marketing took the opportunity to boost the whole brand:
Microsoft Continues to Deliver on Windows Live StrategyAs the launch season continues, additional Windows Live services continue to be rolled out, and by the end of the summer Microsoft expects to ship almost half of the 20 beta services the company has been testing. To help provide a safer and more secure online experience, Microsoft will launch a number of new safety services in the coming weeks, including Windows Live OneCare™ Safety Scanner, a beta version of which was released in November 2005 as Windows Live Safety Center. Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner is a free, on-demand PC scanner that checks for and removes viruses and gets rid of unused files on the hard disk for improved PC performance.
Microsoft will also integrate enhanced safety features into Windows Live Toolbar, which was launched in a total of 38 markets this week. Windows Live Toolbar is designed to help consumers easily find, save and act on information and services across the Internet. It also includes access to the newly launched Windows Live OneCare Advisor, which provides quick and easy access to the Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner and an updated version of Microsoft® Phishing Filter that includes additional functionality to help protect consumers from online data theft.
Also coming soon to customers in the United States is the Windows Live QnA beta, a new vertical search experience designed to help people find the information they are looking for by allowing them to ask and answer questions from an online community on a given topic. Consumers will be able to tap into the power of the online community to search for answers on a variety of subject areas and topics including business, health, arts, sports, technology and more. Those interested can learn more and sign up for the beta at http://qna.live.com.
OK, it’s just a name change, a retroactive announce, and another beta, but it’s better than a mere blog post. Of course, a press release does not a marketing campaign make. Presumably there is some real sizzle coming.
Microsoft’s rumored “Windows Live Answers” service has slipped out the door into beta as Windows Live QnA:
Here we are – Windows Live QnA!OOPS! We hadn’t planned to talk about this yet but some Web pages went live overnight and well, we decided we might as well turn on the blog and give you the straight scoop. You’ll be seeing more on this blog about our team and our product as the days go by. In the meantime here are some more details about what we are doing.
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Windows Live QnA gives us an opportunity to showcase unique knowledge – provided, filtered, rated and approved by human beings – not available anywhere else. QnA allows people to ask questions of their knowledgeable friends, family, classmates at school, professional and community peers in a way that others around the world can benefit from the answers. We want to build the biggest, friendliest and most helpful community of smart humans the world has ever seen. Some people will love the fame and recognition that answering questions will bring them; others will appreciate getting answers quickly and easily.
You can sign up for the beta at http://ideas.live.com/. Based on the description, this seems to be the equivalent of Yahoo! Answers or Google Answers with some sort of social networking twist.
Olga Kharif at BusinessWeek online reports on Microsoft’s efforts to expand the relevance of their search engine results via so-called “social search.” Amid the discussion is:
The foray into social search may not end with the new tool, either. Microsoft is in talks to buy or forge a partnership with two-year-old startup Eurekster.com, specializing in social-network search, BusinessWeek Online has learned from people familiar with the matter. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.
Launched by two serial entrepreneurs who’d previously dabbled in search and social networking, Eurekster essentially combines generic search, though a partnership with Yahoo, with information culled from social-networking sites, such as Friendster.com. Thanks to Eurekster’s technology, a Friendster user searching for “skin care” would get results that reflect reviews and preferences of a predefined group, be it friends, neighbors, or another affinity group — say pregnant women.
The presentation is marred by a conflation of a “Q&A service” with “social search” which is rectified by Danny Sullivan and Don Dodge. The net is that while Microsoft plans a Q&A service called Windows Live Answers where users can ask questions and other users offer answers, this is pretty much a “me too” of previous offerings from a number of companies that have never been successful before.
On the other hand, what Eurekster offers (reviewed in detail here) is a horse of a different color. I’m still skeptical of many of the claims for adding social features to Web offerings (eg. here), but if you read “demographic” for “affinity group,” maybe there’s a pony in social search.
