Microsoft not the largest blog hoster of them all Scoble says
Internet, posted: 23-AUG-2006 14:04
That massive geek love-in, the annual Microsoft Tech Ed do is on in Auckland at the moment. I've been unable to attend this year, but Richard MacManus went along and dug up some contentious stuff about Microsoft's claims on just how many blogs it is hosting.In his post on the Windows Live Contacts beta being launched, Richard quotes George More (Windows Live General Manager) claiming that Live Spaces is the biggest blogging service on the planet with some 72 million Spaces or blogs currently. In its first six months, Moore says Spaces grew to 30 million accounts.
This contentious claim was replayed in The Guardians Technology blog, and Robert Scoble (whom anyone who's ever read a blog should know by know is) had some issues with it.
I've got an MSN, sorry, Windows Live Spaces errm, space, for no other reason than it came free and easy with MSN/Hotmail and I wanted to see what it's like. In my opinion, Live Spaces are easy to use, look pretty OK and come with useful tools (even limited statistics).
Would I bother setting up a blog there though? George Moore says it has millions of users, so surely it'd be an attractive blog host with plenty of traffic.
Well, no, it's not quite so easy. As Scoble points out, most Live Spaces aren't really blogs. What's more, Microsoft has taken away some of the incentives bloggers have, like being able to fully customise the look of the Spaces and maybe more importantly, the ability to put up ads. (I just double-checked, and Live Spaces strips off Javascript ads from the blog entries.)
The Live Spaces don't seem to show up in Google's index and does Technorati know about them?
I'm sorry, George, but I'm with Scoble on this one. Unless there are some fundamental changes in the way the Live Spaces are done, I don't see that it'll ever become a lively, active sphere for regular bloggers.
OK, that's enough of Scoble-related posts for one day.
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