Microsoft"s MSN division is expected to take the wraps off of its MSN Spaces blogging service this week, according to sources close to the company. MSN is expected to tout MSN Spaces as a direct competitor to blog creation and hosting tools such as Blogger, Blog*Spot, LiveJournal and TypePad. Microsoft also will position MSN Spaces as a way to allow users to more easily share photo albums and music lists, insiders said.
Some users have been speculating that MSN will allow users to post to their blogs via MSN Messenger 7, the latest version of Microsoft"s consumer instant-messaging client, which is in beta now and due to ship in early 2005. In August, MSN launched a beta version of its blogging tool for the Japanese market only. At that time, MSN officials declined to discuss when and if they planned to broaden the beta to other countries. MSN officials said they considered the MSN Spaces beta as "an incubation project."