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I’ve never wanted to penetrate the market of students and alumni of the University of Washington so badly before.

According to a MediaPost story, MSN is quietly rolling out its online classifieds offering to Microsoft employees and alums, as well as current and past students of u-dub.

I must admit that I really like these kinds of secret rollouts, because it gets people like me with an appetite for this stuff very antsy to see what’s coming. Of course, if I’m disappointed in the outcome, it’s a big disappointment.

The story says, "Users of the service can post ads to their MSN messenger contact lists,
or to ‘e-mail groups’ – users who have the same e-mail domain as their
own – and eventually, will be able to display their ads to the general
public."

Additionally, "Garry Wiseman, Microsoft product unit manager, said the idea for the
social networking tie-in came from an internal Microsoft classifieds
board, called MicroNews Ads. ‘It was amazing to see how many listings
there were for relatively few people. Thousands of listings,’ he said. ‘It’s different from Craigslist or a newspaper, because there’s a level
of trust there. I know if I buy something from someone, they’re not
going to disappear the next day; they’ve got their own reputation to
uphold. I know exactly which office door to kick down if my new car
breaks down."

I can’t help but read this and think how well Jobster’s current solutions of referrals and job search could fit right into this model. Talk about a nice acquisition play for Microsoft. All speculation on my part, of course.

Click here for the entire story.
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