Microsoft has started a new pilot program on their Microsoft Answers forum whereby users will be allowed to pay for tech support. The way it is intended to work is that users can ask questions on the new website and a select group of technical experts will be able to bid and provide support. The program is currently available only on the English forum. The service is currently named – TechSupport Marketplace and chances are it’ll be re-named.
According to Microsoft:
TechSupport Marketplace is a website developed and hosted by Microsoft. It brings together Customers who are having a problem and independent Experts with the skills and ability to troubleshoot and help resolve those problems. In return for helping Customers with their computer problems in a one on one manner, the Experts earn some money directly from the Customer they are helping.
Why is Microsoft hosting this site?
Microsoft is offering this site as a service for both Customers and Experts. By helping to bring down the cost of support dramatically, Microsoft hopes that Customers will get even small problems fixed. This should make owning and using computers a more enjoyable and rewarding experience.
In order to lower support costs, Microsoft does not charge Experts any money either. This reduces their overhead, which translates into lower costs to Customers. In addition, Microsoft makes available tools to help with the troubleshooting process which should help reduce the time coming to a solution to the problem.
Something like Experts-Exchange? Never liked that site to be honest and this might have a negative impact on the community aspect that Tyler Welch (PM – MS Answers) talked about in our latest podcast.
Update: Microsoft will not be taking any of the share of the money and all of it will go to the expert, minus Paypal’s processing fee since it’ll be the payment gateway.
Update #2: Mary Jo Foley has some more program specifics courtesy a spokesperson at Microsoft.
December 19th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Don’t you think it would have been useful to actually post a URL for this “TechSupport Marketplace” website?
I’m seeing a few dozen search hits for this TechSupport Marketplace, but none of them are showing a URL for it.
???
December 19th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I would’ve if I had it. This is all the news I have at the moment. The link to the new forum is being given to the guys who’re participating in the pilot program, I unfortunately am not a part of it as of now. The screen shots I have are also horribly low res so didn’t share them either, make no sense.
December 20th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Do you know anything about Microsoft winding down it’s usenet server? It’s the server that’s hosting the microsoft.public set of support groups. Microsoft has not yet created a windows-7 newsgroup, and it appears that it won’t.
December 20th, 2009 at 11:24 am
They’ve created a Windows 7 News Group for the MVPs very recently.
December 20th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Do you know the exact full-name for this Windows 7 news group?
And is it a real usenet group, or just a web-forum group?
December 20th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
This is a newsgroup for the MVPs only. Other than that, Microsoft Answers & the TechNet Windows 7 forums are the only ones I’m aware of.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:43 am
Perhaps I’m not being clear.
Microsoft created a set of *usenet* newsgroups many years ago (10 – 15) and they operate an NNTP server and a web-interface to those groups. What Microsoft has conspicuously NOT done is add a set of windows-7 groups to that hierarchy.
What-ever Microsoft wants to create as a support forum to be run by their MVP’s, it can’t be done with newsgroups and be private or anonymous (as usenet is).
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:09 am
hmm… I’ll see what I can find.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Hi Manan,
This is off topic but you have a little problem at your website, it shows the error:Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/beingman/public_html/wp/wp-content/plugins/topsy/topsy.php on line 966 on top of it…(besides that i really like your site)
Best regards
Frank
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Hi Frank, thanks for dropping by
yes, the error started appearing ever since I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, I’m still trying to find out what’s causing the problem by disabling the plugins one by one.
And thank you for the appreciation
December 28th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Error on the header of your page.
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/beingman/public_html/wp/wp-content/plugins/topsy/topsy.php on line 966
Please get it corrected.
December 28th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
thank you for the update, I thought it was fixed. The error is due a plugin, which is not topsy. So I’m waiting for updates and trying to troubleshoot the error.
February 22nd, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Initially, people who visit the Windows XP and Windows Vista forums “Ask a Question” page on Microsoft Answers may be invited to participate. The pilot is obviously limited in scale and Experts who help the customers have been selected by Microsoft especially for this pilot.
March 6th, 2010 at 3:04 am
i think this actually is a good decision that experts are to give answers because i will help solving the issues more easily as well as quickly and also presence of experts will going to to help in keeping the forums clean by preventing same questions being posted again and again and many times un-answered!
- Adil
(sorry for my bad english)
March 6th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Hi Adil, I agree with you. Thanks for dropping by