• Illustration: Friends Explorer

The relaunch of Spaces, Microsoft's blogging service, shows how the company will integrate Windows Live services to increase traffic and keep users within its network. Most notably, Windows Live Spaces lets users establish social networks with their Windows Live Messenger and Mail contacts, as well as friends of those contacts. This new feature brings Microsoft into competition with social-networking sites such as MySpace. However, the relaunch was marred by technical problems, such as poor performance and incorrect page rendering—the type of problems Microsoft must avoid in the future to build a loyal Windows Live audience.

Going Social with Friends Explorer

In less than two years since its inception, MSN Spaces has become the most popular blogging service on the Web. According to an Apr. 2006 ComScore report, Spaces now has more than 100 million unique monthly visitors—more than double its traffic from one year ago. One reason for this rapid growth is Spaces' integration with Microsoft's MSN Messenger (now Windows Live Messenger) instant messaging service, the worldwide leader in its category with more than 204 million users, according to ComScore. Messenger indicates when a user's contacts have created or updated a page on Spaces, which directs Messenger users to the site. Even today, about 50% of all Spaces traffic comes from Messenger, according to Microsoft.

In Aug. 2006, Microsoft extended this integration strategy with the relaunch of Spaces under the Windows Live brand. A new Friends Explorer feature lets users invite their contacts from Windows Live Mail or Messenger to become their Spaces friends. These friends appear on the user's Spaces page, allowing visitors to see and make contact with them. (A permissions system protects privacy.) More importantly, the Friends Explorer lets users see profiles for friends of friends and make contact with these people. (For a screen shot and more details, see the illustration "Friends Explorer".) Eventually, Microsoft will extend the Friends Explorer to other Windows Live sites and services, particularly Mail and Messenger.

Microsoft hopes the Friends Explorer and friends of friends features will encourage users to expand their networks, creating loyalty to both Spaces and other Windows Live services and causing users to spend more time on the network. The goal is to capture the kind of traffic found on social networking site MySpace. According to a May 2006 Nielsen report, MySpace has more than 42 million unique users and is growing at more than 300% per year, making it one of the fastest-growing sites on the Web. Windows Live Spaces product manager Moz Hussain asserts that Spaces offers a safer and more meaningful experience than MySpace, as it allows users to start with their friends and expand that circle in a controlled fashion, while MySpace allows any user to contact any other user.

Other Updates

Windows Live Spaces also has the following new features:

Windows Live Gadgets, small interactive applications created by Microsoft and third parties can be added to Spaces pages. Previously, these Gadgets were available only for Live.com, a user-customizable home page. (Note that Windows Live Gadgets are currently different from and not compatible with the Gadgets planned for Windows Vista.)

A Search box at the top of every page allows users to search Spaces or the entire Web. Microsoft hopes this integration will direct users from the popular Spaces service to its Windows Live Search service, whose market share trails far behind Google and Yahoo.

Banner advertisements are displayed at the top of Spaces pages. Unlike the optional text advertisements from MSN partner Kanoodle, which Spaces users can add to their sites to earn revenue, these banner ads are mandatory, sold by Microsoft, and do not earn revenue for Spaces users.

The "jewel," a new Windows Live interface element is a drop-down menu that appears when users hover over the Windows Live logo. It contains links to other Windows Live services.

Resources

Windows Live Spaces is at spaces.live.com.

Windows Live Ideas, a good resource to keep track of Windows Live services and betas, is at ideas.live.com/.