Windows Live Expo - Microsoft's Answer to e-Bay

Expo, formerly code named as "Fremont" launched by Microsoft on November 1, 2005 as beta service, is a free ad listing service to allow members to sell items, map listing and find and interact with other parties. This allows listing in wider range of categories including music, images, and electronics to real estate or even remote pizzeria. It is integrated with Windows Live Local service that provides map and search service and lets user see directions to a sale location as garage sale or concert site. It has an innovative feature over classified ads, that lets you geo tag your ad. You can restrict the ad to your contacts in messenger or by any classified group, restrict by nation or simply throw it open to world at large. Users can even narrow down their search with in 25 m iles radius in United States.

MSN, with presence in 42 markets in 21 languages and monthly traffic of more than 440 million unique users, is set to present a satisfying content experience and advertising opportunities to its users worldwide.

It is, to some extent, similar to "Craigslist", but unlike in "Craigslist", here user can limit his listing to some select category as to those in certain location, or same email domain or has option to chose as to whom he buys from.

Improvements over Other Options

Windows Live Expo lets you communicate using message box and not list your email unless you make it public, thus your email address can stay protected from spammers. Future version of expo is likely to introduce complete anonymity in conversation using IM bot. It does not encourage spam, and spamming accounts can be banned.

Presently it has Some Bugs Too

Being in beta, it is facing some issues of integration. Such as if you are creating a space, while adding a listing on Window Live Expo, you will need to edit the same to show in expo. It has so far some fixes to be done for FireFox as its rich text editing has some problems.

Competition

Though, Google Base, is also coming up in a big way, e-Bay would be its biggest competition for now. Customer hatred towards e-Bay could be a big motivator to join Windows Live Expo. Windows Live Expo is expected to provide good relief to small and medium sized sellers that are fed up with high fees charged by e-Bay, "unfair" freezing of accounts by PayPal, and cumbersome procedures of getting refund from unscrupulous sellers.

Integration with Other Microsoft Products

It is expected to be integrated with many other related services as "Windows Live Search" to find the information about any product, "Windows Live" to get any content as news, search results, "Windows Live Toolbar" to let you search from any web page, "Windows Live Messenger Beta" which is promised to be a next generation messenger with some new features, "Windows Live Mail Beta" that would let you preview your email without loading a page, "Windows Live One Care" that promises to offer maintenance, virus protection and firewall, "Windows Live Local" to get you bird's eye view of most major cities in US initially and later on other parts of the world, "Windows Live Custom Domains" to help you set up your own personal email address and easy web access, and "Microsoft Office Live Beta" to offer you viable web presence and much more.

Future of Windows Live Expo

MSN's strength can not be underestimated. Windows Live Expo could be coming as bundled with every Window installation. Windows Live Mail is expected to control spamming and may succeed Hotmail.