Russell Beattie Notebook

MSN Local: Send to Phone

Posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 3:26 PM

Check this out... Mike Smuga posted some screenshots last night from Microsoft's new MSN Local feature where you can send the search results to your mobile phone right from the Web page. It's pretty much exactly like the Send to Phone feature Yahoo! launched a year or so ago. I took some screen grabs comparing the two... pretty similar if you ask me! I tried out the service and got a link on my phone via SMS, but it doesn't seem to work on my Nokia N70. All I see is "MSN Mobile services are coming soon...," yet the link works fine in my PC browser, which is odd.

It's a decent implementation from what I've seen, but what I don't understand is what Microsoft is doing still messing with MSN Local services. They've got a brand new Windows Live Local service up and running - which is a another clone, but of Google's map stuff instead - yet they haven't bothered to copy GOOG's send-to-phone feature in the POI bubble yet. I really don't get it. Why bother with MSN still - I thought Live was their strategy now? I wonder if this is just an odd transition phase or if it's a sign of general BigCo disorganization? It's hard to tell... MSN Mobile in particular right now is pure chaos... Spaces is awesome yet the rest just seems to be betas of new Live stuff and a bunch of random aging MSN services all sort off rolled up into a ball.

Regardless, those guys are moving fast with mobile in general - especially with Live.com - and getting faster. I think this send to phone stuff is definitely a good reminder to everyone in the mobile industry: It's best not to turn your back on the Borg.

-Russ