Marketing.fm

TechCrunch entered Live Expo into the Deadpool, but I claim that MS has not left the classifieds game just yet.

I received word today that Microsoft is launching Task Market which is essentially a mini rent-a-freelancer for specific office related tasks. (its not exactly classifieds but rather a niche of classifieds)

From the outreach note:

For every person who throws up both hands at the prospect of creating a complex formula in Microsoft Excel, somewhere in the world there’s another person who can make it look easy.

I cannot tell you how true this is as I have seen it first hand. Having a project board for “mini projects” from $20 - $500 seems like a much needed resource. Currently you can probably find the same services at the same price levels at sites like Guru, iFreelance, RentACoder, but none of them can put the volume of small business users at their service like Microsoft can with some well placed links off of a property like MSN.

I like the approach to Task Market because they are not going after Ebay or Craigslist but rather a smaller subset of people that have specific office problems that need solving.

Will it work? I have no idea, but I can tell you that there are frustrated people out there right now willing to pay who wish they had an Excel guru standing by to solve their formula errors.