We've received great feedback regarding the communities feature and thought a little further information on it's wondrous possibilities might be nice.  A community by definition is "a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists."(dictionary.com)  So, by it's nature, community access is restricted to those outside of it.  However, Expo gives community members the choice to restrict their listings or not... and many choose not to. Safety in numbers Also by its nature, a community exists for people to communicate with usually trusted members where there is a similar association of some kind.  Some people have expressed frustration that a community is limited to a work place or academic realms.  However, just because people may share a domain, hotmail.com for example, doesn't mean they are part of a community that shares similarities, localities or close associations.  It is important for community members to feel as though the potential for safe and trusted transactions exists amon

You requested the ability to send messages to other users without using a Live ID... and now Expo delivers with the new Anonymous Messaging feature...   Next time you post a listing, you may notice the new option under the Communications section.  Leaving it checked will allow anonymous users to contact you via email about your listing, without having to sign in first.  Benefits of selecting this option include widening your potential buyers market to many new people, including those who have not yet signed up for a Windows Live ID.    

The Expo team has been busy.    First, a few things about Team Expo: - we are a small development team within Microsoft that focuses on what we think is cool technology and cool consumer experiences.  We don't have a marketing budget.  We believe in providing a positive consumer experience that we hope will earn word-of-mouth and some notion of viral. - we are very focused on innovation and trying to nail core consumer needs. - many of our recent changes and updates have been on the backend - focusing on robustness, scalability, and up-time.  we believe these investments will pay off over the long-term.   Next, a quick summary of some consumer-facing changes from our latest release.  We're pretty damn excited about a few of these:   - Buddy Alerts - we have launched a new feature that allows a user to post a listing and automatically opt-in their Messenger buddies to be notified with a 'toast' indicating that their buddy has posted something for sale on Expo.  In the first few days, the numbers have blown us away and exceeded our projections for number of alerts sent and click-thrus to our users' listings.  This new feature helps us to capitalize on the original idea borne out of Expo over 2 years ago: providing a classifieds service within your trusted circle of friends, classmates, and coworkers.  A year ago, the Wall Street Journal coined the concept as 'Social Classifeds' as more and more companies looked at this idea and extended them into their own services.    - Local Focus - we have optimized the site to show local listings on your home page.  We have also started suggesting local locations for your searches with IP lookup.  You can change this local focus at anytime.   - Anti-Fraud - we have enhanced some of our backend services to help fight potential fraud

Great news for our users across the pond; Expo's PayPal integration just expanded to the UK!  Now our UK Expo users can post listings with the added ability to pay with PayPal.  Having PayPal on your listing allows for a quicker, easier, and more secure transfer of funds.  With PayPal, you can receive payment in almost any form, including credit cards!  So go ahead and sell some of your stuff and add the PayPal payment option to your listings.  And who knows, it might just be the extra bit that helps you sell your collection of disco balls (because decorating your bedroom like the set of Saturday Night Fever just isn’t as “cool” as it was when you were 13). Thanks for using Expo! Team Expo http://expo.live.com