Microsoft, some four years too late, has caught onto Blogging.
The launch of MSN Spaces is Microsoft’s attempt at taking on Google’s Blogger in particular and Blogging in general.
So is it any good? It has pings, RSS and trackbacks, all standard blog stuff now. It also has inbuilt music lists (imported from Microsoft media Player only) and photo albums and other bells and whistles for personalisation. Though there use will be limited as Microsoft has only provided 10MB space per blog. In the era of 1GB free email accounts 10 MB is nothing. There is also choices of a few themes, effecting the colours and backgrounds, but not really the layout. There is even a simple statistics page, so you know if your blog about hamster suicides has an audience.
But what’s it like to use?
I joined it to see. spaces.msn.com/members/creationrobot
My first impression is positive. It is easy to set up, if you already have a Microsoft Passport account such as Hotmail. It does have the insular feel of Microsoft though, “Allow trackbacks from other MSN Spaces” is the default option, not “Allow trackbacks from other sites”. The other thing that strikes me is how few options you have to really change the look of your blog. But then this isn’t WordPress. This is blogging for the those that don’t want to mess with Apache or MySQL. This is Apple-like blogging by Microsoft - they KISS. It’s a good formula for the target audience Microsoft are going for; Joe Public. The non computer expert.
Positives:
Easy to setup and use; your mum could cope.
Simple extras, such as photos.
The mobile support is good.
Negatives:
It’s Microsoft.
Where are your backups? Answer, nowhere; your enteries are not able to be exported either. Moving away from Microsoft is not allowed.
No script or plugin support.
Only 10MB of space per blog.
Insular, this is Microsoft land, everything in Spaces points back at Microsoft products or services by default.
Does it beat Blogger though?
Yes, and that in itself will allow Microsoft to gain a foothold in the Blogging market - expect this to be built into Messenger soon.
