Microsoft retires Project Emporia

By Daniel Rubino
published

Project Emporia. We’re guessing many of you have not heard of it but some of you seasoned vets surely have. It was one of Microsoft’s many research projects into social, news, cloud computing and other areas of "new media" interest.  But being a research project is just that and it entails a finite end.

Such is the case with Project Emporia, which was an interesting news app for locating stories that pertain to your interest. Think of services like Zite. It had a dedicated audience on Windows Phone and even had a few updates here and there but as of today, it has come to an end...

The good news is like all of Microsoft’s research, what they learned will be incorporated into future services and officially rolled out. We may already be seeing some of this in the form of “recommendations” in Windows Phone 8, which observes your online behavior either for apps or even local businesses and gives you recommendations based off of that (don't worry, it's 100% opt-in). Perhaps Project Emporia’s findings will be used to better augment Bing News and turn it into more than just listings.

Either way, it was fun while it lasted.

Source: Project Emporia; Thanks, Sabita M., for the tip

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Executive Editor

Daniel Rubino is the Executive Editor of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft here since 2007, back when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, Microsoft Surface, laptops, next-gen computing, and arguing with people on the internet.

15 Comments
  • If I knew what it was and used it, I would be sad. But I am still sad, since Microsoft is shutting down a lot of projects.
  • I don't see it as shutting down. I think the article said it best when they said it was a "research project" the knowledge learned will be implemented into future work by Microsoft.
  • This reminds me of their research website so.cl.
  • I used this app. Enjoyed it. RIP.
  • It stopped getting new content quite a while ago. But it was a research project, so it had a definite shelf life...
  • Yeah the support died real fast as i remember it. And a very cool project name went unknown....till now.
  • Emporia was great! I stopped using it some time ago because they stopped supporting it fulltime, it was often offline, but befire that is was my most used application on my phone, it was really great! I learned a looot of really interesting stuff thanks to Emporia.
  • It was my favorite news reader, stopped working months ago though. Hope to see a MSFT branded reader based off this tech.
  • One thing I really want is a Microsoft competitor to Google Reader. There is no decent alternative, and something that integrates with outlook.com woud be great.
  • While there is flipboard, this projects was unnecessary.
  • Flipboard? They seem to be WinPhobic, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
  • I just commented to the wrong place. Sorry :)
  • An end is finite by definition.
  • ---deleted---
  • Shame, great app/service.  As other have noted it stopped working ages ago.  I moved to Zite in the end, still waiting for their Windows 8 app.