I’ve just been playing with MSN Spaces, Microsoft’s entry into the world of blogs. It’s easy enough to create a blog, and I managed to create a profile easily enough, although the site operates pretty slowly and it took me a number of attempts to upload a photograph (kept telling me that area was not available). Adding music requires a playlist from Windows Media Player – I’m operating iTunes on a Mac, so I couldn’t do that at this stage.
I found the site pretty intuitive – but mostly because it closely imitates features on the other, open source blogs. Not a lot of original stuff here. As Stephen Downes states:
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“This is a typical Microsoft entry into a new field: nowhere near as good as the market leaders, painfully imitative, but leveraging Microsoft’s market position to try to achieve lock-in and push the competition out. I don’t think it will work this time: people are more loyal to their blogs than they are to their browsers.”
You can see the test blog I set up at http://spaces.msn.com/members/derekwenmoth/
I had a look at this yesterday as well, and discovered the WYSIWYG text editing tools only appear in IE, but that’s the same for movable type isn’t it?
Without reading the full Stephen Downes article (link ?) unusually, he seems to have missed the point this time. MS aren’t trying to prise existing bloggers away from their favourite software, they’re after the 10x (100x?) as many new bloggers who will be coming along in the next year or three. They’ve anticipated Mobile-blogging and provided a clean route in for all the MSN passport holders out there using Messenger, MSN groups and hotmail. Young people may well go for it in large numbers, and their culture eventually displaces that which is currently mainstream.
Some people think the competition can only be good for blogging as a whole, while others dread the consequences of MS getting a hold.
my experiment is over there:
http://spaces.msn.com/members/andyroberts/
Andy
you’re quite right about the target audience – there’s a huge market out there of people who are looking for somewhere to set up a blog, and this is as good as any (if not better in some respects) – even if a little on the slow side to load. The linking with MSN passport etc could still prove a barrier to some – I think that’s where Stephen Downes has a concern.