Hungry Go Where strikes Microsoft deal

With the new deal, MSN users will now have direct access to Singapore’s popular Hungrygowhere.com food website.

MSN has announced its exclusive collaboration with the site. Says Mark Inkster, Managing Director of Microsoft’s Online Services Group in Southeast Asia: “We are always looking to improve our offerings and provide our users with a wider variety of quality, relevant content. Exclusive partnerships with channels such as Hungrygowhere.com will provide our growing base of MSN users direct access to leading sites in Singapore. We strive to simplify users’ online experience, and through this partnership, regular Hungrygowhere.com users’ will now have access to a comprehensive selection of news and alternative information all on the MSN site.”

Hungrygowhere.com is best known for its honest and credible food reviews written by consumers, it has been listed as the number one Food & Beverage Restaurant & Catering Website for both 2008 and 2009, according to online marketing intelligence site Hitwise. The food review site draws more than 400,000 unique visitors every month.

MSN and Windows Live properties are also Singapore’s most popular online platforms with 1.3 million Singaporeans being MSN users and nearly 2 million Windows Live users; representing 39 per cent and 59 per cent of the 3.37 million local Internet population respectively.

MSN Singapore’s local online entertainment and sports channels are also immensely popular, drawing 143,000 and 173,000 unique users a month respectively. Combined with Hungrygowhere.com’s extensive viewership, MSN hopes the collaboration will be positioned as the best place for online news, entertainment, sports, and lifestyle content.

“This addition to our already popular offerings will also provide advertisers with another platform where they can engage with the vast number of visitors to MSN’s suite of channels, from Lifestyle to Sports to Food. Coupled with the hugely popular Windows Live services of Hotmail and Messenger, this new service will offer advertisers an effective way to reach either a mass audience or a specific target demographic,” concluded Inkster.

Dennis Goh, Managing Director for HungryGoWhere.com, says that with the new partnership, the site can expect its operations to be able to expand rapidly around the world. He added that the website would still be fully managed by the Hungry Go Where team and not Microsoft. He also hinted that users could soon look forward to many new features that would be launched in 2010.