Web 3.0 & MSN (Part 2)

Vertical Strategy

MSN (an abbreviation of Microsoft Network) is a collection of Internet services provided by Microsoft. MSN provides a range of Internet services and it services have changed significantly since its release. We will take a look at the Company’s various online businesses below, with a special emphasis on its verticals.

Horizontal Search
MSN has an online search engine. According to comScore’s QSearch data Microsoft was ranked 3rd with 10.3% market share in September 2007. Out of the 999 million searches carried out on Microsoft sites, 966 million searches were carried out on MSN-Windows Live in September 2007.

Finance
MSN Money is the Personal Finance and Investing site of Microsoft. The site is an excellent resource for news and information and provides consumers with a number of financial services tools. The site is powered by Microsoft Money 2007, gets software and financial content from CNBC, a leading financial news channel. The site attracts over 13.77 million unique monthly users.

Autos
MSN Autos is a popular destination for buying and selling new and used cars. The site, in partnership with AutoTrader.com, provides listing of used cars. Other than listings of new and used cars the site also provides the latest news and advice, research and review of cars, insurance and car financing details, videos and photos of cars, vehicle guides and ranking of automobiles. The site attracts 3.92 million unique monthly users.

Careers
MSN Careers allow users to post resumes, find employers, and search jobs. MSN has tied up with CareerBuilder for its careers site. The site also allows users to sign up for job alerts, provides advice, publishes career related articles, information and the latest news on careers, resume services, lists of the most popular job categories and stories on featured employers.

City Guides
MSN City Guides provides restaurant reviews, entertainment information, and travel planning resources for more than 5,000 cities across America. One of the popular features is the reader review poll, which allows the audience to vote on everything from Best Pizza to Best Hotels in a city. MSN City Guides also delivers local business listings, news and weather reports, and sports scores.

Encarta
MSN Encarta delivers educational resources, information, and fun facts directly to parents, kids, and other inquisitive people. The comprehensive site features award-winning reference tools and access to online degree programs.

Entertainment
MSN Entertainment attracts consumers looking for juicy gossip about favorite stars, new music downloads, movie trailers, and more. The site has a dynamic array of content, plus interactive and streaming features. It includes MSN Music, MSN Movies, MSN Radio, MSN TV and MSN Video.

Games
MSN Games provides a diverse array of games, from Wheel of Fortune and Bejeweled to Messenger Checkers. MSN Games with an audience of more than 7.7 million active members is a highly interactive community. 82% of the visitors visit the site five times in an average week. The average gamer spends over 32 minutes each time they visit MSN Games.

Health & Fitness
MSN Health & Fitness provides reliable, detailed information on health and fitness. The site has more than 25,000 pages of content, including health topics, interactive tools, expert columns, message boards etc. The site has partnered with the leading players in the health and fitness industry to aggregate and serve the best content to its consumers.

News
MSNBC.com is a leading player in online news. MSNBC.com is an interactive site that combines the best of traditional media with innovative new technology. MSNBC provides participatory news and information experience to over 24 million users per month.

Lifestyle
MSN Lifestyle brings together the content, tools, and community to empower women and men to turn their aspirations into action. The site has extensive content on food and entertainment, beauty and fashion, home décor, family, relationships, and leisure. The site attracts over 5.55 million unique monthly users.

Shopping
MSN Shopping is among the largest e-commerce destinations on the Web, although not at the scale of Amazon or eBay. The site has a good comparison shopping engine that searches more than 29 million products from over eight thousands online stores. The site attracts over 6.57 million unique monthly users.

Community
Spaces is the community site of MSN. It has been branded as Windows Live Spaces. The site has easy-to-use personal site creation tools, which enables consumers to express themselves through a variety of rich feature offerings including blogs, photos, music files, and integration with Windows Live Mail and Messenger.

Travel
MSN Travel is an online travel service provider. MSN Travel offers specialized, original travel content with easy access to booking resources for the business and leisure traveler. The site has partnered with Expedia.com for its travel search engine. The site attracts over 3.54 million unique monthly users.

Others
Apart from the above, MSN also operates in various other verticals like, Astrology / Horoscope, Dating & Personals, Directory, Greetings, Groups, Kids, Real Estate, Sports, Tech & Gadgets, Yellow Pages, Weather, etc.

Gaps in the MSN portfolio
MSN is following a shotgun strategy for expanding its verticals. It has the cash to do so but I feel a more focused strategy of investing in some key verticals will be a far better strategy. The gaps, therefore, are depth-oriented, not breadth-oriented. Furthermore, Microsoft’s main strength in business software, in my opinion, is a far better place to spend its cash reserves, not in the online businesses, where its core competency is limited.

(To Be Continued)

[Part 1]

This segment is part 2 in the series : Web 3.0 & MSN
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