Microsoft is developing a free online service that will allow people to list items for sale, events and other classifieds type of information that can be shared either with select groups of friends or anyone over the Internet, the company said Tuesday.

The service, code-named Fremont, has been in internal testing at Microsoft for about a week and a half, Garry Wiseman, MSN product unit manager, told CNET News.com in an interview. He said he could not say when it would be available publicly.

"Basically, it will be a free listing service, with a bunch of twists to make it very unique, such as integration with social networks, in particular integration with MSN Messenger," he said.

Ads relevant to the listing will appear alongside the search results, he added.

Fremont will allow people posting a listing to make it searchable globally on the main MSN search site as well as a standalone Web site. Users will also be able to specify that it be viewable only by people in the poster's MSN Messenger buddy list, in their MSN Spaces network, or in a specific domain name e-mail group or, such as e-mails that end in "Microsoft.com," Wiseman said.

Listings are geo-tagged and integrated with MSN's 3-D satellite image-based mapping application Windows Live Local, formerly called Virtual Earth, so they are viewable on a map, he said. Searchers can specify a geographical area to target as well as ask to see only listings from people in their MSN Messenger buddy list.

The concept was born in February "as we looked at the way classifieds were heading online," he said. "It was quite obvious there was a huge market starting to grow there."

A team of six was formed and work began in earnest in April, Wiseman said.

"One of the inspirations for the community aspect was Microsoft's internal classifieds listing service," he said. "The amount of cars sold on that is just phenomenal."

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