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MSN Spaces Launched

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From the Microsoft press release MSN Introduces New Communication Service That Enables Blogging, Picture Sharing and More 

MSN Spaces: More Than a Blog

The MSN Spaces beta version is a free service available in 14 languages and 26 markets worldwide. MSN Spaces was designed to make it easy for consumers to create and maintain a personal Web site, bringing the power and benefits of blogging to millions of Internet users, regardless of their level of technical expertise. More than a blogging tool, MSN Spaces is a dynamic online scrapbook where consumers can share photo albums, personal music lists and more. And more than an ordinary personal Web site, through seamless integration with MSN Messenger and MSN Hotmail, MSN Spaces will automatically notify online contacts when a person's Space has been updated so his or her online community knows when it is time to pay a visit. People can sign up for MSN Spaces through MSN Messenger or by going to https://spaces.msn.com. Key features of the service include the following:

  • Control your Space. Consumers can choose the people who visit their Space through three levels of permissions: public, MSN Messenger contacts only or private.
  • Use pictures and music to say more. MSN Spaces enable consumers to easily display their pictures via a photo album slide show. Consumers can easily share playlists through their Space with Microsoft® Windows Media® technologies. With just two clicks, people can sample or purchase a song on someone's playlist through MSN Music**.
  • Create an extension of yourself. Contact Cards - a new addition to MSN Messenger and Hotmail - are windows into a consumer's Space, mirroring its look and the most recent information posted. MSN Spaces also supports RSS, so consumers can publish their Space to others by way of RSS viewers and aggregators - including My MSN, coming soon.
  • Post remote updates. Consumers can post updates to their Space remotely via e-mail or a mobile phone.
  • Make it your own. Fifteen custom backgrounds and five layout templates give consumers a way to quickly customize and personalize their Space.

MSN Messenger: More Expressive Than Ever

Available in 26 languages, the public beta release of MSN Messenger builds on the popular IM service which supports more than 145 million active users worldwide each month, and offers consumers new ways to express themselves online and personalize their instant messaging experience. Available for download at https://messenger.msn.com/beta, the beta release of MSN Messenger will give consumers a taste of what's to come with the final release, expected next year. Features in the MSN Messenger 7.0 beta enable consumers to do the following:

  • Get attention. Consumers can reach out to friends and family by sending a "Nudge," an alert that shakes the contact's conversation window with an audible notification, or a "Wink," animated pictures that include sound and that can be virtually "thrown" onto the screen of a contact's Internet message (IM) window. New emoticons, backgrounds and theme packs from Microsoft Corp., including advertiser-sponsored packs such as for "Halo® 2",* round out the experience.
  • Stay connected. Through integration with MSN Messenger, consumers can automatically let their contacts know that they have updated their MSN Space. The MSN Messenger Contact icon "gleams" when an update is made, notifying others to visit the Space via the Contact Card.
  • Access the Web anywhere. MSN Web Messenger, shipping in 25 markets and 15 languages, enables consumers to access their MSN Messenger account and contacts from virtually any PC with an Internet connection.
  • Choose your online status. The beta release of MSN Messenger gives consumers more control over how they're seen online by enabling them to choose their availability status before logging into Messenger.

MSN Hotmail: Bringing It All Together

MSN Hotmail, the largest free Web e-mail system in the world with more than 187 million active accounts, rounds out the trio of free, integrated communication services. MSN Hotmail recently introduced 250MB inboxes to new consumers in nine markets and launched a photo upload tool for all consumers to make it easier for them to share pictures online. The beta versions of MSN Spaces and MSN Messenger help give consumers even more ways to communicate and share through MSN Hotmail, including these:

  • View online status anywhere. Through integration between MSN Hotmail and MSN Web Messenger, in select markets, consumers are able to see Messenger availability status even on PCs that don't have MSN Messenger client software.
  • Learn more about Contacts. MSN Hotmail consumers who have an MSN Spaces site will have a Contact Card visible in the Hotmail address book, providing friends, family and other online contacts with one-click access to their Spaces site.

Now that this stuff is live I'll be blogging a bit more about work as well as discussing some of our future direction. By the way, check out my space at https://spaces.msn.com/members/carnage4life

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    All of this stuff is still in Japanese though?

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    Hmm....I tried hitting spaces.msn.com but got the version for Japan. Strange because I am in Australia with my browser set to en-au, I even changed by default to en-us but it didn't fix it.

    They must be doing IP detection instead and assuming Australians are from Japan?

    I cannot read Japanese so can't see if I can set it to English.

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    uuhhhh it's in Japanese???

    I heard the first beta was for Japanese users, but why the press release and all the stuff if it's still not in English????

    Anyways I managed to create my new space

    http://spaces.msn.com/members/juandg

    (Before some moron used my nickname)

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    It WAS in Japanese for the beta and for about 30 minutes after I posted this. It should be in English now [or whatever your language of choice is as specified by your Web browser depending as long as it is supported by MSN Spaces].

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    I just noticed a new layout to the MSN.com site

    Looks like there's a whole array of new items from MSN

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    It’s in English now. The launch wasn’t until 6:00PM Pacific. Before then all you were seeing was the Japanese trial (Alpha) of spaces.

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    Hmmm... spaces.msn.com seems to already have crumbled under the load.

    -Don

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    why is that we can;t sign on ?? .net passport is on overload it appears....

    The site may contain an error or be experiencing a problem that affects the .NET Passport service.
    • The site may not be an official .NET Passport-participating site.


    did any1 notice this in fine print ?? what does it mean ??

    * Internet charges may apply.

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    It keeps crashing!!!!!

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    I read over on Tony Gentile's blog
    http://www.buzzhit.com/2004/12/msn-spaces-launches-review-inside.html
    that it may appear down until it's fully rolled out at about 9PM PT.

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    Microsoft officially threw its hat into the blogging ring with MSN Spaces. It's a blog. It's a photo album. It's a list-maker thingy. There's a lot to this. Dare Obasanjo (Microsoft XML evangelist guy) breaks it down nicely. My take...

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    Where's metaWeblogAPI support?

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    try going to spaces.msn.com with firefox - kinda cool, but nothing like it looks like in IE, which is presumably what MS intends it to look like. reason enough to stick to blogger (browser agnostic)

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    First Live Interview tonight with Thomas Gaume from Ipodio.com we discuss Bittorrent and concerns we have with Torrents and Podcasting...

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 03, 2004
    Saya baca MSN support Weblog mengenai MSN Space. Hal yang menarik dari MSN baru ini adalah kita dapat membuat Weblog sendiri, meskipun kustomisasinya tidak sefleksibel Movable Type (MT). Namun, saat ini makin banyak aplikasi komunikasi yang mendukung sosialisasi blog. Ini...

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2004
    Its great. Except it won't let me create a space - every time I try (and thats a lot of times now) it bounces me back to the front page. A fake hotmail account works fine, but my hotmail doesn't. Not being able to sign up seems like a big bug.

  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2004
    Wow, I can't even sign up. I cannot get the English page to load. I am in Seoul, so its all Korean for me. Unfortunately (umm, well) I cannot read any Korean.

  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 07, 2004
    Currently MSN Spaces autodetects what site to send you to based on your browser's langauge settings. If you change the language settings of your browser via the General tab of the Tools->Internet Options menu to English (en-us) then you should be able to access the English site.

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2004
    I signed up for MSN service and have yet to find a way to just up load my HTML files so I can have a plain ol' normal website. Does MSN have such a service? Even my old basic dialup ISP provide me with webspace to upload a site to!

  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2004
    Is anyone else not able to upload pictures? I keep on getting a page that says "This space is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."

  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 15, 2004
    It's cool. I'm glad I gave it a try.

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2005
    Maybe a little bored, I decided to make my own 10 best events in the blogosphere of 2004.

  • Anonymous
    May 29, 2009
    PingBack from http://paidsurveyshub.info/story.php?title=dare-obasanjo-s-weblog-msn-spaces-launched

  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2009
    PingBack from http://topalternativedating.info/story.php?id=10487