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MSN Spaces is Microsoft's free Social Networking platform. The site was launched in early December 2004 with the aim of allowing its users to reach out to others by publishing their thoughts, photos and interests in an easy and compelling way. With this goal, MSN Spaces finds itself competing with similar services like MySpace and Yahoo!'s 360º.

As well as allowing users to share their thoughts, photos and interests, MSN 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 MSN Space based on the relationship between them (e.g. Friends, Family etc.). Visitors may also be granted permission to comment on various aspects of a user's MSN Space.

MSN Spaces is integrated with all versions of MSN Messenger from version 7 onwards. This integration allows MSN Messenger users to easily view their contacts' MSN Spaces and also alerts users (via "Gleams") when their contacts' have updated their MSN Space. In the summer of 2006, MSN Spaces will become part of the Windows Live services platform, at which time it will be rebranded as Windows Live Spaces.

PowerToys

Several "PowerToys" are available for MSN Spaces users that allow for greater customisation of an individuals MSN Space. The "Windows Media Player" PowerToy gives users the ability to play and display music and videos on their MSN Space. The "Tweak UI" PowerToy, gives users the flexibility to alter the style, color and transparency of certain aspects of an MSN Space, while the "Custom HTML" PowerToy grants users the ability to call a small amount of hand-written HTML code (a feature that is often used for displaying banners and other graphics).

All of the PowerToys are beta features which are unsupported and can only be added to an MSN Space by the following process:

1. While editing your MSN Space, add the relevant code onto the end of your MSN Space's URL in your browser's address bar: a. For Windows Media Player use: &powertoy=musicvideo b. For Tweak UI use: &powertoy=tweakomatic c. For Custom HTML use: &powertoy=sandbox 2. Click the Go button next to your web browser's address bar.

Contact Cards

Contact Cards, which summarize recent additions to an MSN Space for a particular user, are integrated with MSN Messenger, MSN Web Messenger and Hotmail Contacts. Clicking on a users icon in your buddy list, pops up their Contact Card which shows thumbnails of their recent photos, a summary of their recent blog entries and a short list of recent songs from their playlist.

Criticism

MSN Spaces has attracted some controversy from some of its users.

The Terms and Conditions that all users must agree to when signing up for an MSN Space, grant Microsoft permission to "(1) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat your Submission, each in connection with the MSN Web Sites, and (2) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law." Finally noting that "Microsoft will not pay you for your Submission." *

It has also mentioned that MSN Spaces censors the words that a user can choose when naming their Space, prohibiting for example the word whore or the so-called "seven dirty words". In addition, Microsoft has received criticism for censoring the words "democracy" and "freedom" under its Chinese portal. [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/13/ms_ban_freedom/

MSN Spaces has also been criticized from people for supposedly deriving its "MSN Spaces" brand name from the popular blogging/social networking website Myspace.com. There has been no information whether if the "MSN Spaces" brand name was derived from Myspace.com.

Finally, the MSN Spaces logo is very similar to the trademarked logo of popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, which has been in use since the distribution was first released in October 2004: a stylised aerial view of three people of different colours holding hands in a circle, at the same angle. *

As with other blogging services MSN Spaces experiences attacks from spammers and troublesome users. Common examples of this including adding multiple comments (flooding), spam (in comments and through TrackBacks) and threatening messages.

Trivia

  • MSN Spaces is one of the fastest growing blogging communities in the world with an estimated 100 million (100,000,000) unique visitors per month as of May 2006. This is partly due to it being integrated with MSN Messenger. *
  • In July 2005 a new competition site was launched called the MSN Space Race. Photos of UFOs and aliens had to be taken in order to win the prizes. There was also a hidden UFO somewhere to be located. If someone located this they would win a trip to the NASA Space Center. *

External links

Blog hosting services | Social networking | Microsoft websites

MSN Spaces | MSN Spaces

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "MSN Spaces".

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