Microsoft has just launched an online blogging service called MSN Spaces.

The MSN Spaces online service is in Beta and it is completely free. MSN Spaces allows the creation of a blog and integrates in it some interesting advanced features, including:

• Photo sharing
  Allows uploading of images and photographs and integrates a small player on the blog page to browse through them. Images shared can be also viewed in a screen saver mode.
• Music lists
  Share your music preferences via MSN Spaces music lists, where each song is hyperlinked to search MSN Music. MSN Music allows you to hear a sample of each and every song available on its catalogue. It is also possible to upload a Windows Media player playlist an to have that automatically generate a MSN Spaces music list.
• Links area
  Allows listing of URLs and descriptions under user designated categories.
• Profile page
  Integrates a photo and basic information about the blog author.
• RSS output
  The RSS 2.0 standard is supported.
  a) There are no orange XML or blue RSS buttons to get to the feeds.
  b) RSS is turned off by default for all private spaces. Presently it cannot be changed.
  c) The RSS feed is for the entire space you own, not for each module you create in it. Too bad.
  d) Content categories are not available as RSS feeds.
  e) RSS enclosures are not supported.
• Notification system
  Informs authors about changes to their Space including new comments that have appeared
• Look and feel personalization
• Traffic statistics
  Under the Settings section you can access traffic statistics of your blog.
• Mobile blogging -
  Allows blogging via email and from a mobile phone. If your mobile device can send e-mail, you can publish blog entries to MSN Spaces.

• Blogit Toolbar
  Spaces has a special URL that makes it easy to post entries into your blog, http://spaces.msn.com/blogit.aspx. The Blog It toolbar button is a little tool written by MSN Scott Isaacs that allows you to quickly blog from any web page. "If you see something you want to blog, select some text, and click the Blog It toolbar button." Please visit http://www.siteexperts.com/blogging/blogit.htm to get your own blog it toolbar button. (Please note: The toolbar button only runs in Internet Explorer and is not endorsed nor supported by Microsoft.


• Integration with MSN Messenger 7
  MSN Messenger Integration: Here's some interesting screenshots. Contact card. You can post to your MSN Spaces blog directly from MSN Messenger.
• Integration with Hotmail
• Access Control
  Level of access can be customized on each blog. Available access levels are: a) public, b) private or c) only accessible by people on your MSN MessengerAllow List. Your Allow List is a list of everyone who you've allowed to see your online presence and IM you via MSN Messenger. This should be everybody on your buddy list and everyone who's asked to put you on their buddy list and you've accepted. This is a nifty feature allowing you to create a blog that is accessible only to people in your immediate circle.
• Price: It's free.

Other items I discovered during my initial exploration:
MSN Spaces is available in 14 different languages.

Storage space available is a meager 10 MB!

Comments and Trackbacks are integrated.

Automatic pinging of weblogs.com is available.

WYSIWYG article editor integrating all formatting fucntions.

The most notable disappointment came when I copied and pasted a ready to be published article from Movable Type into MSN Spaces: none of the HTML formatting tags were interpreted.

Learn more about MSN Spaces at these different destinations:

• Homepage / Get your own Space
  Press Releases


• Download MSN Messenger with MSN Spaces integration


• Channel 9 video demo


• News results about MSN Spaces

Microsoft own MSN Spaces maintained by the very people who have created the MSN Spaces technology:

• Scott Isaacs (web experience architect)
• Mike Torres (program manager on web experience)
• Michael Connolly (group program manager on web experience)
• Dare Obansajo (program manager on backend)
• Jay Fluegel
  (program manager on web experience)

Scott on Feedster writes: "That's right -- you can goto http://spaces.feedster.com/ and search only blogs that are found on MSN Spaces. Think of this as Feedster's little "Welcome to the Conversation" present to Microsoft."