Microsoft will exit the classifieds business
Users of a classified ad service running on Windows Live, called Expo, began receiving on-screen notices last week that the service will cease to exist on July 31, and that no new applications for accounts are being taken.
As far back as November 2005, Microsoft had major plans to develop an online marketplace for individual advertisers, based around a regular -- if not particularly innovative -- API. The plan there was to create a new channel for the influx of users to Windows Live services, including Messenger, in light of the very sudden rise to popularity of services such as Craigslist -- services that newspaper chains believe are threatening their very existence, by usurping one of their principal revenue streams.
When the service first entered beta in February 2006, it was touted as the embryonic form of a new and burgeoning online ecosystem. "What sets Windows Live Expo apart is that people can set their own search parameters for goods and services. They can define their own marketplace universe," stated the service's product manager, Garry Wiseman, at that time.
Those parameters were supposed to have been a kind of enticement for users, a way of limiting potential responses to an ad to certain categories of Messenger users, for example, or those who live within a certain radius of the seller.
In an interview with BetaNews that month, Wiseman had more practical goals in mind. "We figured we'd try this and see what happens," he told us.
As it turned out, the Expo universe ended up looking a lot like similar universes devoted to buying and selling goods -- specifically, some of the smaller universes where not a lot goes on. A check of the "Books" category this morning turned up 139 listings, though we noted some of them were actually general links to places like Amazon, where we've been told books are often sold.
In a telling epitaph, Silicon Valley Insider's Dan Frommer wrote, "If Microsoft's massive traffic pipe couldn't even attract people to the service, it's not one worth running."