MSN Spaces
Dec 2nd MSN rolls out its web based Blog app, and on the 4th I jumped at a chance to see how it works. I love Blogger and believe there's nothing like it but ever inquisitive I also like to see what others can do and share it with my fellow entreprenuers. If you're looking for a technical review sorry you aren't going to find it here though some things may still be a bit relevant. This review and in fact this whole blog is dedicated to looking at the various blogging technologies through a marketer's eyes.
So... what is brewing at MSN Spaces? That's the name of their new blog service, very much in Beta meaning trial - prone to bugs, imperfect however you want to call it. Creating the blog was simple and easy. You first need to have a MSN Messenger or Hotmail account in order to get a blog. I logged into My MSN but nothing is mentioned about Spaces at all. Neither was there mention on MSN Home itself - probably because it's still Beta. Not finding any link anywhere I had to do a web search for MSN Spaces to obtain the URL.
Once on Spaces, I simply clicked on Sign Up Now. Since I was still logged in with Passport, it launched immediately into asking for my blog title and all the basics like template. I now have a brand spanking new MSN Spaces blog called Chasing The Gurus. After I got the blog I was a little confused what to do next. Like any new application you need to be courageous to try things out and get a feel of the blog. Still, I feel the overall backend design and creation process could be better documented.
PLUS - After tinkering about and learning the interface, I found some really cool features I feel is sorely missing in Blogger. One of it is trackback. I've always hesitated with creating Blogger blogs because of trackback. It's a controversial issue no doubt because it can be abused easily but then again from a marketer's view, its really a wonderful way to easily get link backs without even us having to do anything but publicize the blog.
PLUS - Another thing I liked about it is categories! This is another one of my Blogger gripes. Being able to separate my blog topics into categories seem to make a lot more sense from the human point and also I feel search bots. Have you ever tried to read more of a blog and found that since everything is archived by date you just don't know how to find more of the relevant stuff you want to read? I have - sucks. Who really wants to read through 50 posts to find one that is related to what you're interested in. Not me. Funnily however while Spaces supports categories and you can add it very easily to the blog, I cannot seem to create one...
NICE - Adding links to the blog is also very simple, a plus and permissions wise, I don't have an opinion yet whether its a good thing to have the ability to limit your blog to MSN Messenger buddies.
PLUS - Mobile Blogging (moblogging) support. Yea so we can blog via email from Blogger too but Blogger only saves the post and doesn't publish it. Spaces allows you to choose whether to save only or save and publish. Nice.
NICE - statistics. You can track page views and referring URLS
NICE - Photos gallery feature 10MBs
NICE - One page overview of your entries, comments and trackbacks where you can also quickly delete entries, spam comments and trackbacks.
NICE - Module based adding of links and lists and layout easily change from 1,2,3 column format.
NOT SO NICE - I don't see the ability to customize templates so my blog title is truly unattractive. Also, the blog entry form is not WYSIWYG - only on IE. Much documentation needs to be added.
NOT NICE - No capability to FTP to my server - a HUGE plus in Blogger and the URLs are totally unfriendly.
Well there's much I'd like to say but my memory fails me now. Join me again as I venture into MSN's Spaces
So... what is brewing at MSN Spaces? That's the name of their new blog service, very much in Beta meaning trial - prone to bugs, imperfect however you want to call it. Creating the blog was simple and easy. You first need to have a MSN Messenger or Hotmail account in order to get a blog. I logged into My MSN but nothing is mentioned about Spaces at all. Neither was there mention on MSN Home itself - probably because it's still Beta. Not finding any link anywhere I had to do a web search for MSN Spaces to obtain the URL.
Once on Spaces, I simply clicked on Sign Up Now. Since I was still logged in with Passport, it launched immediately into asking for my blog title and all the basics like template. I now have a brand spanking new MSN Spaces blog called Chasing The Gurus. After I got the blog I was a little confused what to do next. Like any new application you need to be courageous to try things out and get a feel of the blog. Still, I feel the overall backend design and creation process could be better documented.
PLUS - After tinkering about and learning the interface, I found some really cool features I feel is sorely missing in Blogger. One of it is trackback. I've always hesitated with creating Blogger blogs because of trackback. It's a controversial issue no doubt because it can be abused easily but then again from a marketer's view, its really a wonderful way to easily get link backs without even us having to do anything but publicize the blog.
PLUS - Another thing I liked about it is categories! This is another one of my Blogger gripes. Being able to separate my blog topics into categories seem to make a lot more sense from the human point and also I feel search bots. Have you ever tried to read more of a blog and found that since everything is archived by date you just don't know how to find more of the relevant stuff you want to read? I have - sucks. Who really wants to read through 50 posts to find one that is related to what you're interested in. Not me. Funnily however while Spaces supports categories and you can add it very easily to the blog, I cannot seem to create one...
NICE - Adding links to the blog is also very simple, a plus and permissions wise, I don't have an opinion yet whether its a good thing to have the ability to limit your blog to MSN Messenger buddies.
PLUS - Mobile Blogging (moblogging) support. Yea so we can blog via email from Blogger too but Blogger only saves the post and doesn't publish it. Spaces allows you to choose whether to save only or save and publish. Nice.
NICE - statistics. You can track page views and referring URLS
NICE - Photos gallery feature 10MBs
NICE - One page overview of your entries, comments and trackbacks where you can also quickly delete entries, spam comments and trackbacks.
NICE - Module based adding of links and lists and layout easily change from 1,2,3 column format.
NOT SO NICE - I don't see the ability to customize templates so my blog title is truly unattractive. Also, the blog entry form is not WYSIWYG - only on IE. Much documentation needs to be added.
NOT NICE - No capability to FTP to my server - a HUGE plus in Blogger and the URLs are totally unfriendly.
Well there's much I'd like to say but my memory fails me now. Join me again as I venture into MSN's Spaces
posted by Lynette at
5:34 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Lynette,
This initiative to start a blog with this theme, is so much needed, it hurts! ;) Thank you very much fo rthis information.
Some of my remarks:
Blogger only saves the post and doesn't publish it.Not true, I checked my Mail-to-Blogger recently (have they changed since then?), and it published to the blog as well. It just took something like 5-10 minutes, but that's not the issue here, right?
read through 50 posts to find one that is related to what you're interested in.If that blog is crawled by Google, maybe you can use site-limited Google search to find what you need?
Trackback. Did you see Haloscan? They give you the possibility to get and send Trackback pings.
I didn't like the idea of Trackback coming on popups, as it's not too search engine friendly, but on the other hand, it defends you from spammers to some degree, because they might think about it as well. ;)
But all the other features - thank you so much for letting us know. Now I don't need to go there and check it out for myself. ;)
If you ever want to try MSN Messenger, send me a message: ofarber@hotmail.com.
Best,
Olga.
By
Olga Farber Becker, at 5:27 AM
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