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E-commerce company Mercata Inc. launched a six-week promotion of a new co-branded group buying service on MSN Shopping.

This service gives MSN users exclusive access to special Mercata PowerBuys that are not available anywhere else on the Internet, the company said. Financial arrangements were not disclosed.

At the dedicated site, accessible only from MSN, consumers can collectively participate in Mercata's group buying environment, called a "PowerBuy," to secure deals on a variety of name-brand products. This promotion is the first time Mercata's patent-pending "We-Commerce" technology will be available on a Web site other than Mercata.com.

"The dynamic PowerBuy shopping model is ideally suited for a site like MSN, where there is a huge community of shoppers who can pool their purchasing power to drive prices down and get amazing deals," said Randy Nargi, vice president of marketing for Mercata. "This is a tremendous opportunity to showcase our PowerBuy experience to a vast new audience of shoppers."

Mercata, founded in September 1998, is a privately held company with funding from Vulcan Ventures Inc.