Windows Live Shopping and Windows Live Product Search

[mandy]

Microsoft Corp. is building a Windows Live Shopping site.

Currently, all that's available is a site announcing that a beta version is "coming soon." Linked to the homepage is a help-wanted ad that gives some insight as to what's planned for the latest Live service.

In seeking developers for Windows Live Shopping, Microsoft said it's building "the largest structured commercial catalog in the world, ingesting data from hundreds of thousands of retailers." The company said it is also tackling user-generated content platforms for "reputation and incentive services," which apparently would include buyer ratings of sellers.

In addition, the company said it plans to run the product in more than 50 international markets...

full article: http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/183701222

related topic:
Microsoft Testing Its Own 'Google Base' Classifieds Marketplace
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...495.0.html

[Kristijntje]

Update:

Microsoft Corp. has released in beta this week its  Windows Live Shopping site, but Firefox users will have to switch to Internet Explorer if they want to look for bargains.

A visitor trying to access the new site with Firefox on Wednesday found his browser directed to a page that said, "We're sorry. Windows Live Shopping Beta does not yet support Firefox. We're working to correct this as soon as possible...

Windows Live Shopping boasts 40 million items from thousands of stores. Like a lot of other similar sites, it offers comparison-shopping, product reviews and the ability to share links to items via email...

full article: http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/187003230

[Kristijntje]

The Comparisonengines blog has a review of Microsoft's two new comparison shopping services Windows Live Shopping and Windows Live Product Search.

Product search:

There are many other differences between shopping search engines and shopping comparison engines, but the blatant one at this point from a consumer facing point of view when looking at Windows Live Product Search is that there are no merchant ratings. Buyer beware. Just because a merchant is included in the index doesn’t mean that it’s a legitimate merchant. While there’s no guarantee on a site like PriceGrabber either, at least PriceGrabber takes the time to review merchants and has processes set up to protect consumers (more on this in another post)...

Live Shopping:

...the special functionality includes drag and drop shopping lists (very smooth), shopping guides (Yahoo! Shoposphere’s Pick Lists  and ShopWiki’s Wiki Buying Guides better watch out), and product attribute comparison (easily grab a couple items you like and hit ‘compare’). Great user interface advances. It might take a little while for a newbie to get used to, but Windows Live Shopping is a huge leap forward for the MSN Marketplaces group.

full article: http://www.comparisonengines.com/2006/05...msn-style/

[mandy]

Windows Live Shopping Beta and all associated Windows Live Shopping gadgets are being taken offline effective February 19th...

User-created content from Windows Live Shopping Beta (lists, guides, and reviews) will continue to be available on MSN Shopping.

MSN Shopping was and will continue to be the flagship product of our team. It receives the vast majority of user traffic and is the target of all on and off network promotion...

full article: http://www.comparisonengines.com/2007/02...shut-down/