In interesting news today Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be providing its blogging platform, Windows Live Spaces, instead allowing its users to migrate their blog or allow new users to sign up for a WordPress.com blog. Its interesting because, as is increasingly apparent, Microsoft don’t want to compete directly with many online services but rather aggregate most online services into a single place.
Microsoft say that Spaces has 30 million active users, an impressive number, however its not a competitive or highly thought of blogging platform which is why Microsoft have decided to allow its users to use the more feature rich WordPress.com. As part of the partnership between the two companies WordPress will be making Messenger an option to publicise a new article has been posted with a user’s friends.
What I find interesting with this decision, aside from the obvious that Microsoft has admitted defeat, is that Microsoft have clarifying just what it is Windows Live is. Microsoft appears to want Windows Live to on websites and not the websites themselves. It makes sense, after all the company has been hard at work on Messenger Connect to rival Facebook’s ubiquitous web presence and then surfacing the information via the Messenger Social feeds on Windows Live. It also streamlines Windows Live somewhat into the 4 areas clearly defined on the website, Hotmail, Messenger, Office and Photos.
Three of the main services of Windows Live are about publically sharing content with Hotmail being, mostly, about privately sharing. Obviously SkyDrive makes some of the sharing possible and Mesh (formerly Sync…formerly Mesh) allows personal data to be shared across all devices.
As far as I can tell Windows Live is now really focussed on sharing whether it be photos, documents, websites, how one if feeling, what one is up too, etc, etc. It is all possible with Windows Live. Some would argue that Spaces allowed people to share a story, review, essay, etc however with such a wide scope for the possible use of Spaces it is either impossible for Microsoft to provide options for everyone or it becomes too costly. Its the same reason why users can add a YouTube service to Windows Live rather than Microsoft building a competitor to YouTube.
I actually find this whole story reassuring, it does indeed feel like Microsoft do want what is best for its users…well online anyway. Now to wait for Microsoft to allow me to embed the Photos slideshow on my blogs, then it would be possible to use Windows Live to share most things across the web easily.
Interestingly I used Windows Live Spaces for a few months back in 2009 and quickly resorted to using WordPress.
