June 14, 2005

New! The MSN Shopping Blog, MSN Shopping Insider

MSN Shopping has become the first major comparison shopping engine with a public weblog, the MSN Shopping Insider.

Initial Authors:
Scott Austin, Director of Consumer Programming
Chris Jolley, Group Programming Manager

This could be an ideal test of Scoble's thesis:

"...companies that have lots of bloggers will end up making better products, will end up having better marketing and PR, will end up making more profit at the end of the day, and will be more likely to have more than one "hit product" and will be more likely to last 100s of years."

Honestly, I have not met anyone who said the old MSN Shopping was their "go to" shopping engine. How could this happen with the vast resources of Bill Gates & company? Dunno, but history looks less likely to repeat itself, if these developments are any indication:

(1) Participation in hReview
(2) Alliance with PriceGrabber
(3) Launch of MSN Shopping Insider

Congrats to Scott and Chris for kicking off the conversation. Will be interesting to see how this develops: what audience(s) they try to reach, what topics they choose to tackle, the posting frequency, the level of reader participation... and will other comparison shopping engines follow their lead?

link: MSN Shopping Insider
http://blogs.msdn.com/msnshoppinginsider/

New! The MSN Shopping Blog, MSN Shopping Insider
Posted by Sean O'Rourke on June 14, 2005 at 11:18 AM
Archived at MSN Shopping