Microsoft launched MSN Spaces today. I had a nice discussion with Kim Peterson yesterday about the article and the effect it might have on products like Radio UserLand. Its been pretty clear for quite some time that just about every major portal either has or will release some form of blogging tool. Those tools are almost always free and supported by advertising revenue. I think that any invitation to put more people's content on-line is a good thing.
In most respects, Radio UserLand finds itself in a very different category from a features and functionality perspective. That link goes to a page done in outline format using ActiveRenderer and gives you an idea of the Radio's power if you are into that kind of thing. I think MSN Spaces will be appealing to many consumers and should push the blogging space in general towards more powerful features.
Then there are the community aspects of blogging to consider - bloggers on LiveJournal blog because its LiveJournal. Radio has its own community of users as does Salon. Any new entrant in the space is going to have to "create" that community or let it happen organically and hope for the best. Long term, community is going to be the harder of the two problems to solve for the new guys. It will be very interesting to see what kind of a community MSN Spaces attracts.
10:03:00 AM 
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