Full Circle Associates

Samir on Expo classifieds, currently in closed Beta with MSFT employees for 2 months.

The purpose of the application is to create a marketplace for people to sell stuff to other people, locally focused like Craigslist, but able to do national transaction. Focus on allowing you to sell stuff to people you know. TO people in your buddy list, to people based on membership in a group. If you all have the same email domain, all work at MSFT with @microsoft.com - so you can search just with co workers. You can track down someone who sold you a lemon car. Actually comes from the motivation of a MSFT internal service called MicroNews. New hires furnish their apartments. Successful due to level of trust.

All the stuff is live and working in internal beta. You are moving to a new city. You are the Fonz, moving to Seattle. Needs a place to live, transportation and works at Microsoft. Categories of autos, events, housing, jobs, merchandise, people (personals), pets and services. Huge taxonomy. Samples of random listings and buddy list show up on home page as well. Filtered view of what buddies are selling.

On the left hand side are search filters. Geographic (seattle, 75 miles) and everyone inside of Expo. Can change search location, search radius (25 miles to all US) and listing community - from everyone on expo to people in my trusted circle (shared email domain). Going to search for places to live. First through taxonomy to housing and click on that. Get 5 results. Maybe advance search by rent, less than $1500, 1-2 bedrooms, hit search and 3 results. SOme light integration with some Windows live and MSN. Mapping. Hit map results, overlaid on results, hover over to get a listing preview. This one looks good, look at actual listing, details, images, member profile of listings, what else that person is listing. Can message via double blind messaging system. He won't see my email addy, I won't see his. Pick up messages on system, alerts via email or sms. Send message to him, asking if price is negotiable. Can also send IM if the person has opted into that.

Next I want to sell something. Sell the motorcycle. Clicks on post a listing, autos, motorcycles for sale. Only have to sign into the site when you want to sell or interact, but can browse without. Passport or Live account. Set name, price, description. Can choose who you want to make the listing visible too - messenger buddies, people insideof my email group. Can allow IM direct, add pictures. Then post. Wait for responses.

Then go back to home page and search for Hondas. Oh look, just got a message from someone on MSN. Back to search. QUick results on categories of interest. Add to my saved searches to come back to it later. Want to narrow search. I can change community - just messenger budies only, search narrows, click on listing, send message.

We're totally interested in the community policing the site. Can report abuse, can vote on a listing being cool which bumps them to the home page in a cool listings list. Allow you to, interested in different things like tying in other things on the development table.

Hope to launch with some business in the next few weeks, then wider after that. Business model is contextual advertising. Premium listings. Always free to post listing. Might have to play with value-adds.

Categories: Technorati Tags: SearchChamps4, microsoftexpo