Microsoft Debuts Celeb Favorites
The Washington Post reports that Microsoft has launched CelebFavorites.com. The website shows the favorite places of celebrities using Windows Live Local.If you've ever wondered where tennis star Anna Kournikova likes to get a pedicure when she's in Miami or asked yourself where New York Yankee Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez goes for Italian food in Manhattan, Microsoft has those answers.The idea of the site is similar to the Gawker's recently launched Gawker Stalker, which lets people submit celebrity spottings. However, Microsoft's site just provides information about celebrity hangouts and homes -- it doesn't allow submissions about recent celebrity sightings. Actor George Clooney once suggested flooding Gawker Stalker with fake celebrity sightings to render it useless.
The company yesterday launched a promotional Web site ( http://www.celebfavorites.com ) featuring Windows Live Local with an overlay of the favorite restaurants, bakeries, hotels, dance clubs and more from a handful of celebrities' hometowns. The map features "pinpoints" of those locations.
Click on the map for actress Eva Longoria, for example, and you'll see that she loves dining at Mi Tierra Cafe and Bakery, a 24-hour restaurant in San Antonio, and shopping at the River Center Mall.
For now, only a handful of celebrities are featured on the site but Angela Morrow, product manager for Windows Live Local, said the company is in negotiations with several more celebrities and plans to keep the site up for the next month or two to gauge its success in driving traffic to Windows Live Local, a rival to Google Maps.
Posted on May 9, 2006
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