Live is life

INTERNET: MSN Spaces gets ready for livewire action in cyberspace.

From today, MSN Spaces will have a new global name "" Windows Live Spaces. Why? Simply because Microsoft wants to migrate its popular blogging service to its Windows Live brand.

Microsoft's Windows Live concept envisions an online world that gets better when everything works simply and effortlessly together.

MSN Spaces (now Windows Live Spaces) can be said to be Microsoft's free social networking platform. The site was launched in early December 2004 and allows users to reach out to others by publishing their thoughts, photos and interests. MySpace and Yahoo!'s 360° are similar services.

With the change, Microsoft has added new features and brought about tighter integration with other Windows Live services such as Live Messenger. Around 10-12 million people use instant messenger (IM) services in India.

Yahoo and MSN messengers (they both recently tied-up) comprise around 70-80 per cent of the IM population globally and in India too. It is this segment that MSN is looking at exploiting with its Windows Live Spaces. A user can contact his/her friends or friends of friends from the contact list on both these messengers.

"The things you care about "" your friends, the latest information, your e-mails, powerful search, your PC files, everything "" come together in one place. It's a new Internet experience designed to put the user in control," in the words of Rajnish, head, digital marketing, revenue, MSN India.

MSN Spaces is the most-widely used blogging service worldwide with more than 100 million unique visitors, according to comScore Networks "" an independent Internet audience measurement and consulting company.

Over six million photos are uploaded to the service each day, with more than 2.5 billion photos uploaded since MSN Spaces launched as a beta service in December 2004.

"It allows consumers to create personal Internet sites where they can express themselves in a variety of ways and interact with the important people in their life. The service provides people with a place to create and update a Web log, or blog, as well as share photos, music playlists and more," adds Rajnish.

Now available in 30 markets and 16 languages, Windows Live Spaces has additional functionality including a social networking service and the ability for developers to create gadgets, new features developed by hobbyists and partners, that can be added to a Space by users.

Spaces users are given over 100 varied themes and several different page layouts to choose from when designing their MSN Space.

Users also have the option to set access rights for visitors to their Space, based on the relationship between them (such as friends, family and the like). Visitors may also be granted permission to comment on various aspects of a user's space.

MSN Spaces is integrated with all versions of MSN Messenger from version 7 onwards. The most notable of the new features is a Friends Module, says Rajnish.

The addition would allow a user to create a list of friends similar to Friendster or MySpace, making Spaces more competitive with social networking services.