Several of the major portals and e-commerce sites have strengthened their classified offerings within the past few days, and now Microsoft has beta-launched its own classifieds service,
Live Expo. It's got a smattering of listings already; it will be interesting to see how it's promoted, and used, during the next few months. All of the listings are free. The site incorporates a social networking aspect that other sites don't offer -- allowing groups of users to check for products or services within their group, for example.
The other day, Google added a payment system to its free classified-and-all-sorts-of-other-content system, Google Base. And EBay added classified-like listings in several categories besides real estate, where it has offered them for a while.
All of this has no direct bearing on online news, but it increases the pressure on newspapers and their dot-com businesses to strengthen their classified offerings, in print and online. And the proliferation of free listings won't make it any easier for newspapers to maintain their classified revenue, unless they're able to maintain and grow their "critical mass" in the classified ads in their marketplace(s).
