Thanks SYBOLD. According to the report at Reuters, MSN Japan, joining hands with local content provider, T.O.S Co. Ltd., will launch a Blogging service by next week.
The Blogging culture has in deed made its impression to Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates whom hinted not long ago that he too, could start blogging. MSN hopes to compete with Google's Blogger and expected one million users in the first year.
Apart from supporting the overwhelming demands in the country where 9 out of 10 houses are web-enabled, MSN Japan is also hoping to use this service as advertising medium.
"Magazines, for example, cannot hit a break-even point if the circulation is below 100,000. We target one million users to be recognized as an effective advertising vehicle," said MSN Japan GM, Yoshie Furukawa.
While offering the service to users for free of charge, this project will be financed by advertisements and subscription service for extra sets of features, such as expanded storage capacity. Furukawa also added that MSN's offerings will be differentiated from others by supporting mobile devices to enable users to read or update their blog entries from mobile phones.
It is still unclear whether the service will be offered in other countries or not. For those of you who are looking for a free ticket to join the horde of Bloggers, check out the links below for the recommended service.
View: Mod Blog
View: Google's Blogger
News source: Reuters
