Digital Journal — In the face of the growing popularity of social networking websites like MySpace and Friendster, Microsoft has given a facelift to its MSN Spaces, re-launching the service as Windows Live Spaces.
Microsoft says MSN Spaces is the largest online blogging community on the Internet with more than 100 million unique visitors each month.
Like MSN Spaces, the new Windows Live Spaces lets users create their own websites and blogs, but users can now personalize and tweak pages with news feeds, weather forecasts and games.
In addition, Microsoft has integrated Windows Live Spaces into its other products in the Live product line such as chatting with other Live Spaces visitors without using Messenger.
Microsoft’s new Live Spaces is supported by advertising like other Windows Live services such as Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger. Like many other user-driven and user-geared sites, online advertising is now recognized by all major Internet players as the online revenue model for the future.
And with new US laws that prevent kids from using Live Spaces at school or in public libraries, Microsoft has implemented tight security features aimed at protecting kids from online predators.
