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MSN Spaces Tops In Blogs

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 25 May 2006 16:01:54 +0000

Microsoft noted how its MSN Spaces blogging service drew more than 100 million visitors in April, and that does not even include its 20 million unique visitors in China.

Nearly one in seven global Internet users have visited MSN Spaces, according to comScore Media Metrix.

“The trend in more user-generated content represents a shift in the way that media is created and consumed online,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of comScore Media Metrix.

The figures show impressive growth in visits to MSN Spaces. Traffic increased from 41.65 million over 12 months to 101 million in April 2006.

Currently, MSN Spaces allows its users to create blogs. Those users can also share photos, which they do at a pace of over 6 million photos uploaded to the service each day, and more than 2.5 billion uploaded since the service launched in December 2004.

Eventually, MSN Spaces will be superceded by Windows Live Spaces, as Microsoft continues to replace the MSN name throughout its various properties.

When Windows Live spaces launches later in 2006, it will have some extra features.

A social networking component and the ability to create and add Microsoft Gadgets to Spaces sites will be part of the new functionality.

The MSN Spaces page said Windows Live Spaces will launch in the summer of 2006.

On June 5th, MSN Spaces will change all of the URLs for the site. Instead of spaces.msn.com/Name, they will read Name.spaces.msn.com.

One commenter on the official MSN Spaces blog suggested the change could be to make the URLs easier to type on mobile phones, which would hint at a bigger push into the mobile space.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Technorati Bug Raises MSN Spaces Blogs Temporarily

Robert Scoble — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 18:08:02 +0000

I see some people are talking about Technorati’s top 100 blogs list (more on this issue on Memeorandum) and the fact that several MSN Spaces blogs appeared in high spots on that list in the past few days and that some “A list” bloggers, like Dave Winer, were no longer on the list.

Today at the Maker Faire I bumped into head technologist for Technorati, Tantek Celik, and founder Dave Sifry. Both said that there was a bug in the code that generated that list that should be fixed by tomorrow. The bug let the list follow blogrolls that used the “nofollow” HTML attribute, which made some blogs appear higher than they should have.

Oh, looks like the bug fix has been checked in. Dave Winer’s famous blog is back on the list.

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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MSN Spaces Adds Windows Live Expo Content

Nathan Weinberg — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:03:22 +0000

MSN Spaces has added a Windows Live Expo module, so people can list their Expo items on their Space.

You can post your free listing on Expo and then have it displayed automatically, with a photo and an excerpt, to visitors to your blog.

The Spaces team has been busy lately. Their biggest addition was the RSS feed module last month. It allows you to create a sidebar module containing content from any RSS feed, letting you include Flickr photos, sports scores, your other blogs, del.icio.us links, Netflix rentals, and your Amazon wishlist.

Meanwhile, Expo is running an interesting contest. If you attend one of four colleges (University of Wisconsin – Madison, University of Washington, Ohio State University, University of Texas) then “International Collector Edward G. Ramos III” is looking to buy items from you. Ramos III is looking for “obscure” yet valueless items, for which he’ll pay top dollar (in other words, if you list something stupid, you might win a prize).

He’s looking for:

40 piggy banks at $20 apiece
20 Smiley Faced maracas at $30 apiece
20 hardhats for $30 apiece
10 stuffed huskies or stuffed Bucky Badgers at $100 apiece
10 “Death to Smoochy” DVDs for $100 apiece
2 Atari Donkey Kong game cartridges for $500 each
2 Ice Cube or Death Cab For Cutie concert tickets for $500 each
A Homer Simpson Chia Pet for $1000
An Easy-Bake Oven for $1000

What a cool idea! My only regret is that it is limited to college students, and specific college students, which means I can’t get the Donkey Kong bounty (I’ve held onto that game long enough, and $500 is plenty!). Edward G. Ramos III has his own MSN Space, even.

Expo seems to be taking off. There are over 3000 listings in the New York area, and they aren’t promoting and aren’t really accepting many New York people, so that’s significant. I hope more people try it out, since Windows Live has taken a unique and smart approach to the online community marketplace.

If you haven’t given it a shot, check it out.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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MSN Spaces Implements RSS ‘Last Modified’

Nathan Weinberg — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 16:16:03 +0000

Seeing that MSN Spaces RSS feeds were having issues in Bloglines, looking like they were changing constantly due to dynamic elements, MSN Spaces introduced a new field to their feeds:

dcterms:modified

Any RSS reader can check that field to see when the last time an item was modified, and if it hasn’t changed, everything else is ignored. A good fix, but one I’d rather get handled by an industry-standard RSS field. Maybe it’ll happen eventually, and maybe this’ll be this. I just know I’ll be glad when I go into Bloglines and I don’t see every Spaces feed pretending to have 30 new items.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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MSN Spaces Makes Friends Down Under

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:49:57 +0000

A test in Australia of social networking features for users of MSN Spaces lets users add their friends via a new module.

For once it’s a beta test that isn’t US-only to start. Windows Live director Phil Holden announced from Australia how MSN Spaces users in that country can try out the new social networking module.

He described Microsoft’s approach to social networking with this trial:

Our approach to social networking is designed to enable a way for customers to communicate and connect in more meaningful way with their circle of friends and in particular their friends and their friends’ friends. We are doing this by adding this feature to our existing network – be it Messenger, Spaces or Mail rather than build a unique social network. That’s often a little different from other services and I’m interesting to see how things play out especially as My Spaces is doing pretty well in this market and just this week Yahoo launched their 360 service here.

Holden also noted how their social networking will enable users to maintain control of their friendships. MSN Spaces users can invite other users to be part of their Friends list, and only if the other user agrees will they be added to the social network.

Those users can set permissions to determine what information they will and won’t share, and with whom they will share it. Holden wrote that the Friends list shows the invitations that have been sent out and the status of those invites.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.