Windows Live Spaces to Take on Social Networking Services

At Microsoft's annual Financial Analyst Meeting today, Kevin Johnson, co-president of the Platforms & Services Division, will reveal the next version of Microsoft's blogging service, which will be renamed from MSN Spaces to Windows Live Spaces. Windows Live Spaces will pick up MSN Spaces' blogging and photo sharing features and power Microsoft's drive into the social networking market currently dominated by My Space.

"Social networking services today are like the Wild West," Microsoft Product Manager Larry Grothaus told me during a recent briefing. "What we're doing is letting people start out with their inner ring of friends and then expand out."

What Microsoft is doing, essentially, is prepping a release of Windows Live Spaces that improves performance, increases integration, cobrands with other Windows Live services, and innovates social networking. Instead of users connecting to virtually anyone they find online, as is done today with most social networking services, Windows Live Spaces' users will start with access to people they know, then gain access to their friend's friends--given the right permissions--and branch out from there. "It's the way the real world works," says Moz Hussain, group product manager for MSN Spaces.

Windows Live Spaces will include several new UI features that will enable this scenario and help link the service to other Windows Live properties, such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail. A new Friends Explorer will help users discover what's new with their friends and find other users with similar interests. The MSN Spaces UI is being dramatically overhauled with a pop-up Jewel menu (similar to the Jewel menu in Office 2007), an integrated search box, and richer themes. Windows Live Spaces can be extended with drag-and-drop gadgets--similar to those used on Live.com--that can provide almost any functionality imaginable.

So far, MSN Spaces has proven to be enormously popular. The service sports 123 million unique users, with roughly 3 million users visiting MSN Spaces every second. Users upload six million photos to the service every day, requiring 1TB of additional storage every nine days. To put these numbers in perspective, it took MSN Messenger six years to reach 160 million users: MSN Spaces will reach 130 million users in only 18 months.

Microsoft expects to ship Windows Live Spaces by mid-August. Windows Live Spaces will integrate with the current version of Windows Live Messenger and the recently released Windows Live Toolbar, which adds several interesting features to Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), including new smart menus that detect phone numbers, addresses, and other useful information in Web pages and make it easier to interact with people. You can download Windows Live Toolbar now from the Windows Live Web site.

http://toolbar.live.com

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"Microsoft, however, says it has an answer to all of the problems people have with My Space."

Like the fact that MySpace pages look like a dog vomited on my screen?

lotsamystuff July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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serves you well for even daring to visit myspace.

guruguru July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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"The service sports 123 million unique users, with roughly 3 million new users visiting Spaces every second. These users upload 6 million photos to the service every day, requiring 1 TB (terabyte) of additional storage every 9 days. "

That is freakin staggering. That must have at least 2 dell servers running that thing.

anonymous July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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Does Microsoft think it needs to go after every single online service in existence? This is a company that makes Windows and office software. It's not an online service provider. What a waste of shareholder money.

Not that I mind, of course. The more Microsoft stretches itself thin going after every single market in existence so that everything in the world is prefixed with "Microsoft," the more it ensures its flaming downward spiral into irrelevance, just like IBM did. IBM once controlled the PC market just as Microsoft does today. In a flash, IBM's dominance was gone. It's a matter of time before this happens to Microsoft in the next few years.

bonch July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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"Does Microsoft think it needs to go after every single online service in existence?"

Replace Microsoft with Google in the above statement.

tdonahue_nj July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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This should have been part of the weekly short takes.

shark47 July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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"This should have been part of the weekly short takes."

Yes, but Paul never misses a chance to serve as Head Cheerleader for Windows™ Live™ Whatever Service Needs Promotion This Week™.

I agree, though, that it would be more appropriate in "Short Takes". There are more compelling stories of interest to this site's supposed target audience (Windows IT Professionals) than this one, but it's still interesting. Assuming they'e accurate, those ARE some impressive usage statistics.

lotsamystuff July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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"That is freakin staggering. That must have at least 2 dell servers running that thing."

Pretending to be bonch: Nope, just one XServe, just like NASA, universities, etc.

"flaming downward spiral into irrelevance, just like IBM did"

If you think IBM is irrelevant, than you must be a kid that knows nothing about the corporate market. IBM still rules the roost in many areas, including the ever important are of banking. They dropped out of the market because it wasn't profitable enough for them. And since they are so irrelevant, how are they #10 on the Fortune 500 list? http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/full_list/

bmnbmn July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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IBM is "irrelevant" because they don't do photoshop....err itunes....errr iphoto...

well actually it's just that mac users don't do anything that is actually relevant to know what irrelevance is.

guruguru July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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"Replace Microsoft with Google in the above statement."

Uh, Google is a web services company. They got their start with a search engine. Microsoft is a retail software company that sells an operating system and office suite on CDs.

"If you think IBM is irrelevant, than you must be a kid that knows nothing about the corporate market."

My point was that IBM had total dominance of the PC market in the 80s, just like Microsoft in the 90s. Microsoft is on its way out, all the expert analysts agree, and none of you fanboys are willing to accept the writing on the wall. Even Microsoft's employees don't like Microsoft and think Vista's codebase is a "trainwreck."

guruguru:

Frankly, you're an idiot. Macs do more things than Windows is even capable of doing. Have fun waiting until 2007 to get a minor update to your six-year-old operating system.

bonch July 27, 2006 (Article Rating:

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