So Microsoft was one of the dozens of "myspace clone" buyers on elance in the few weeks after Myspace was bought for $580 million? :)

Added: Sorry, just couldn't resist. :)

I find it inconceivable that MSN put out stuff without testing it on every browser. On safari, the header part pushes the page almost 3/4 way to the bottom of my screen, with nothing but empty space.

This site just feels a bit empty to me for some reason, like there's nothing much of value there unless specifically directed to someone's "space".

I wonder if the "Updated Spaces" page will trip any Google spam filters for LIVE Spaces Network! :)

[edited by: Chico_Loco at 6:01 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2006]

Okay, MS transforming it's MSN Spaces/MSN Messengers traffic into a MySpace styled network with some decent add on features seems like a good idea. But after poking around there for a while it's not at all impresssive. Everything looks half done.

The existing traffic from MSN Spaces seems extremely critical of new set up. Complains of lost content are very common. I also read several complains about more ads and the big brother type "friends" permissions.

Which leads me to the confusing part of this project to me. MS seems to be marketting it as a safer version of MySpace for minors. But the crowd there now is almost all adult and with the lame customization options available I can't see too many minors becoming interested. What 15 year old wants some MIT grad designing their "kewl" layout? A layout that a thousand+ other members will have. Some of the adults might not mind limited customization but there's no way you will sell that to the teen/20-something crowd.

So who is the target market for this product?

Seems the Japanese market got a first go at this?

[72.14.203.104...]

man...its gettign more and more obvious that these systems are Korean internet system inspired, imo. so its not surprising Japan had an earlier launch. korea is benchmarked for Asia and then brought "out west" a lot. I said it long ago, but now its just coming into forefront more. if they ever start charging for little add-ons... that'll be the clincher.

[edited by: GrendelKhan_TSU at 6:57 am (utc) on Aug. 4, 2006]

Everything looks half done.

Which makes it 10 times closer to being done than myspace. Of course that hasn't stopped myspace from winning the social networking space.

There is a lesson to learn from myspace: You don't build community with good coding practices or attractive site design or with an "invitation only" growth plan.

Added: Personally, I wonder what it will take to unseat Myspace... I don't think that any real competition will come from a major player (Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo) just cloning features.

MSN Spaces struggles on launch [news.com.com]

The upgrade to Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces blogging and social-networking service has been a study in what can go wrong with a launch.

According to the official Spaces blog, the first 12 hours after the launch were beset by poor performance problems, including issues related to e-mail publishing, statistics pages not working and emoticons from previous Spaces versions not working.