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After relaunching MSN Spaces as a Windows Live-branded service with updated features, a combination of issues caused plenty of problems for users.

Last week's debut of Windows Live Spaces, the blogging service operated by Microsoft, developers were dismayed to find a number of nasty problems crop up on the site.

The development team acknowledged the issues on The Space Craft blog in a next-day entry. "There was a period of over 12 hours where Spaces at best were extremely slow to render, if they rendered properly at all," they noted.

A series of specific issues have elicited the focus of the developers, who noted that the gotchas did not show up until the new Windows Live Spaces moved into production:

Stats page not working
Legacy emoticons not rendering correctly
Some issues with Email publishing
Some issues with Friends Explorer and Firefox

We are also monitoring page-loading performance. We do cache of a lot of client side script so first load will take longer than subsequent loads.
Spaces blogs can have a number of modules, including Gadgets from its gallery. Microsoft is pushing the social networking aspects of Live Spaces pretty hard; the available Friends module can show the user's Live Contacts and display when friends have updated their Spaces.

Microsoft has placed a lot of faith in ventures like the Windows Live initiative. A comment from Steve Berkowitz, former Ask.com CEO turned senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft, illustrated why in a statement released by the company:

"Windows Live and Internet-based ad-funded software and service are critical to driving growth for the company, and we are energized about the continued investments we're making to help provide consumers with a seamless and safer online experience."

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