A couple of months ago, I started my work blog after more than a year of lurking. Since then, I've been beta testing both MSN Spaces and Wallop as well as trying out Blogger and LiveJournal as the potential home for my personal blog. Now that MSN Spaces is available to the general public (though it's still considered just a beta release), I can finally use this as my permanent blogspace!

   I'm also very glad that Microsoft has stepped up in a big way to provide a viable competitor to those other services out there. Here's an overview of MSN Spaces' features:

MSN Spaces Enables Rich Self-Expression

MSN Spaces enables consumers to easily share things with the people they care about in a format that can be easily customized. People can start a Space with just a few clicks, and then personalize it to reflect their moods, likes and dislikes:

• Rich layout. Fifteen custom backgrounds and five layout template choices allow consumers to customize their MSN Spaces quickly.
• Web logs. The MSN Spaces blogging tool allows people to publish and maintain online personal journals and enables them to link to photos and other Web sites.
• Photo albums. Consumers can upload up to 10 MB of photos (250 images after compression) to their Spaces sites and display them to others in slide shows.
• E-mail uploads. Consumers can upload photos or blog postings to their Spaces from virtually any e-mail service or e-mail-enabled mobile device.
• Music favorites and lists. Consumers can create and manage lists of information that is important to them, such as their favorite music, books or travel destinations. Consumers can easily share playlists through their Space with Microsoft® Windows Media® technologies. With just two clicks, people can sample or purchase a song on someone’s playlist through MSN Music.*

MSN Spaces Helps Users Connect With Others

MSN Spaces is designed to help people express themselves online while better connecting them with their friends, family and other contacts:

• Contact Cards. When a person clicks on a Contact Card in a MSN Messenger or Hotmail® Contact list, the card pops up and gives a sneak peek at that contact’s Space – from its look and feel to the person’s most recent postings. The Contact Card includes links to the Space and those entries for easy access.
• Gleaming. When a Spaces site is updated or content is added, the MSN Messenger Contact icon of the Space’s owner will light up, making it easy for friends and family to know when there have been changes. This facilitates more visits to a Space, faster responses to new postings and closer bonds between Space owners and their contacts.
• RSS. MSN Spaces also supports RSS 2.0, so consumers can publish their Space to others by way of RSS viewers and aggregators, including My MSN, scheduled to come soon. This is another way to ensure that the people who matter to a user can stay up to date on his or her Space.

MSN Spaces Offers Protection and Control

MSN Spaces is designed to give consumers control over how they share their Space information and who can access it:

• Permissions. Consumers have three permission control settings on their MSN Spaces site, enabling them to decide just how widely they want to share their content:
• Public: Viewable by anyone
• Contacts Only: Viewable only by their MSN Messenger contacts
• Private: Viewable only by contacts whose e-mail addresses are manually entered by the MSN Spaces author or selected from an MSN Contact list
• Controls. MSN Spaces gives the consumer control over how others interact with his or her Space. MSN Spaces includes settings that give each person power over who views his or her Space and how people can interact, read and comment on the Space. This includes the ability to set up the Space so people can read but not comment.
• Statistics. Consumers will be able to track visitor statistics on their Spaces site, so they will know how many people are visiting as well as other detailed information.