But Microsoft hopes to change all that through the massive promotion of their MSN Live product, which offers well-formatted and relevant result pages, an image service, a dedicated news page and a product which allows you to zoom across the earth to view the globe from a variety of different perspectives. These services are very similar to those offered by Google and, as the recent battle between Firefox 2 and IE7 demonstrated, it is commonplace for companies to imitate a product or service once it becomes established.
Regardless of these clear similarities, MSN's marketing strategy is set to roll out with a bang - in fact, it already started on October 27, with large amounts of "relevant and targeted advertising" (i.e. a pay-per-click campaign aimed at the sites and users they wish to target). We will also see a "sustained strategic online program" that will last until the end of March 2007. Essentially, if you have a hotmail account, this means that you'll receive a barrage of emails from MSN in the coming months. Full page ads in the New York Times and Wall St. Journal are also being run for the next few weeks.
However, there is one fun widget Windows Live currently has in Beta. Extremely popular in Japan, QR codes allow a user to scan a 2-dimensional barcode picture which contains a large amount of encoded text. This is useful because it means a small picture on a business card can be photographed by a mobile or handheld device which is then converted into a ready-made, ready-formatted contact that can be saved with no manual data input. This potentially offers a hugely valuable time-saving device.
The new beta product offers the facility to convert either plain text or pre-made business card text into the QR code creator, which can then be used by mobile devices in the following fashion. There is wide scope for such codes, especially in the usage of novel promotions and marketing - research is already underway to think up a fun marketing campaign that people can view by scanning it into their phones (such as scavenger hunts and guerrilla marketing on the side of bus-stops, etc).
Essentially, the process goes like this: Firstly, add a new contact and turn on the camera on your device.
Then point your camera at the printed code and take a photo.
This is then converted into a ready-made contact.
The product seems to offer solid, Web 2.0-style functionality but, at the moment, is not multiple-browser friendly - and it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to work out which browser it works in and which it doesn't.
Should be an interesting product to watch for when coming across a web marketing campaign or a piece of above the line advertising which tied back to below the line support and promotions.
