Is Windows Live (MSN) Spaces the world's biggest blogging service?

Filed under: Blogging, Web services, Microsoft

Is Windows Live (MSN) Spaces the world's biggest blogging service?

by Jordan Running Aug 21st 2006

According to Richard MacManus, Windows Live General Manager George Moore told an audience at Microsoft's TechEd 2006 conference in New Zealand yesterday that Windows Live Spaces (formerly MSN Spaces) is "now the largest blogging service on the planet," and his assertion is causing a bit of a stir. Microsoft says there are 72 million Spaces in existence, but former Microsoftie Robert Scoble says maybe that's so, but are they really all blogs? Scoble says no, and outlines his idea of what makes and doesn't make blog. "First, let's define what a blog is, at least enough to count for this purpose.

Have original content. Spam blogs that are copied off of somewhere else don't count.
Have at least 500 words of new text-based content every month. Things that look like Flickr streams aren't blogs, sorry.
Have at least two posts in at least the past 30 days. If you aren't posting, you're not blogging.
I don't care if you have comments, have trackbacks, have blogrolls, or any of that."

That seems pretty reasonable to me, but many of the commenters disagree. But Scoble is soldiering on, setting out to collect some data on what Microsoft is counting as a blog. His first sample isn't very promising, with only 2% of the recently-updated "blogs" meeting his criteria. Microsoft's Mike Torres piped up on the original post to tell Scoble his methodology is flawed, because over half of all Spaces are private, to which Scoble replies that a private blog isn't a blog at all. So, who's full of what, here? Is Microsoft blowing up its numbers to inflate its ad rates (or something else?), or is it Scoble whose ego is out of control and who's picking on the low-hanging fruit?

Tags: blogging, blogs, microsoft, msnspaces, Robert Scoble, RobertScoble, spaces, windowslive, windowslivespaces

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

duke hafa said 11:48AM on 8-21-2006

typical microsoft bluff

personally, i prefer any blog services out there but msn live.

Randy said 12:25PM on 8-21-2006

Since when does "biggest blogging service" mean that it has to host active blogs? Wouldn't "biggest" imply the number of active accounts? If you have a credit card that you don't use (or use often) aren't you still a customer with an account for that bank?

Mountain out of a mole hill. And shame on Scoble for causing the ruckus.

Chris said 3:21PM on 8-21-2006

By Scoble's metrics the vast majority of blogs I have seen don't count. I see much more in the way of links, trackbacks and comments than real content.

Fabulo said 6:02PM on 8-22-2006

Quantity, Quality. They claim to have the most blogs. Good for them.

Not sure why we should care about Mr Scobleizer's opinion though. Yes he has a blog. But Microsoft hosts the most blogs :)

Lita said 11:53PM on 8-23-2006

Yeah, they have the most blogs if you count the fact that a pretty big amount of users have them as a profile and not a blog at all.

Stupid.

Ravi Kamdar said 6:57AM on 8-24-2006

I think Live spaces are blog. I use blogger service. But, it also provides a facility to keep your blog private. Blogs are just WEB LOGS. You can publish your digital private blog.

I do not support Microsoft claim, but to those people who hate Microsoft claims, I want to say just one thing...find out biggest blogging service on same criterias...game rules should be same for all...whether its typepad, blogger, spaces, wordpress etc.

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