Spaces Extends Live Strategy

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.