Microsoft launches final version of MSN Spaces

Microsoft seems to be in overdrive today. Not only did they launch the final version of their flagship instant messaging client MSN Messenger 7, they also unveiled the MSN Spaces final version. Both these have been under testing for quite sometime now. MSN Spaces has been developed to compete with Google’s Blogger.com service and offers much more functionality than just blogging. Recently, Yahoo! entered into the same market with their 360◦ service.

The company expects their MSN Spaces to have a global appeal. During the beta phase, Microsoft managed to rope in around 4.5 million users. It now covers around 30 countries and 15 languages. Microsoft is actively promoting this service to the advertisers and the Blogs running on MSN Spaces would be featuring advertisements targeted towards the audience interested in blogging. One of the first companies to have chipped in is Volvo.

Senior representative from Microsoft, MSN’s vice president and chief media revenue officer Joanne Bradford said in a press statement to the media: “Deeper brand integration into MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces will enable our advertisers to connect with their target audiences in more creative, spontaneous and unobtrusive ways.” Microsoft is quite interested in earning revenues from the advertisement on MSN Spaces. Quite expected considering these services are quite expensive to run.

Google surprisingly went backwards with their Blogger.com service when they removed the Google Adsense ads from Blogs hosted on their servers. Now the users of Blogger.com are invited to run their own ads and make money. Microsoft as a result would not impress these potential customers.