With little to no fanfare other than a blog post, Microsoft officially launched their open (and free) classified ad service (they call it a “dynamic social listing service”), Live Expo, last week. At the same time Live Expo U.K. (beta) launched in beta.

Along with the “official” launch, new from Live Expo:

+ A new look and UI ||| Here’s a screen cap of the old UI home page.

+ Ability to add comments to posts

+ API for developers remains available. Example.

+ Driving directions to location (via Live Local) included with each listing.

Live Expo first launched in the U.S. in a public beta at the beginning of March 2006. See this report. When the service was first announced or leaked (code name Freemont), Clickz ran an interview with Garry Wiseman, that was summarized in this SEW Blog post. At first, the Live Expo was compared to Google Base and Danny Sullivan wrote about why this comparison did not make sense.

See Also: Microsoft Product Search (another service) that launched in May, remains in beta.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 12:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.