Early Review of MSN Spaces

I look at bloghosts from a different point of view than most. Since I’m not a tech, I’m looking at it from the perspective of somebody that is perhaps just starting out, but has the same needs as most business users. They want to blog without worrying about installing software, or finding things to add on to the platform to make it work as well as Type Pad or Blog-city, and keep track of their visitors and where they’re coming from.

In its favor, I will say that MSN Spaces does provide a fully-functioning platform, containing statistics, trackback, comments, and various kinds of ways to add a blogroll or favorite links. A brand-new blogger could get started without much trouble, provided they’re not too picky about the way it looks. Most business users are more concerned with the text, anyway, and can also ignore the silliness about looking for dates or whatever. No, Microsoft, bloggers aren’t all looking for love or new friends. I think we outgrew that phase. ;>)

The stats are presented in the same vague and frustrating method Type Pad uses – when does “this week” and “today” begin and end? There isn’t any monthly or yearly total, either, just the grand total. This kind of situation is just fine for many personal diarists (some don’t even bother to track their readership) but for other uses, it’s important to have this other information. Wading through pages of referrers presented one at a time will become a real problem for those with a big readership. There shouldn’t be a need to resort to pen and paper to get a clear picture of visits and referrers.

There also doesn’t seem to be any way to grow.

By this I mean that most bloggers learn a lot about how things work after they’ve been doing it for awhile, and will want to be able to do other things such as add graphics with links, or other kinds of elements. I couldn’t see any obvious way to do these things. It doesn’t look like there is any way to have guest authors or more than one person blogging, either. These missing functions will be problematic for some as time goes on, and they find themselves making the decision of staying with a host that doesn’t meet their needs, or risking a move to a better host.

Of course, I’m aware this is still in beta, so many things might change. It’s also free, so we can’t expect everything! It may be that Microsoft, like Type Pad, is really only interested in the diarists and those with small numbers of readers, and for that use, MSN Spaces is just about ideal.

For right now, I’m still convinced that Blog-city is the only blog host that gives the business user everything they need at a realistic price. And if anybody’s wondering why I’m doing this review on a Type Pad blog – I’m one of those facing that conundrum: am I better off with the host that doesn’t quite get it, or better off moving, and having to start over…

Note: The Blog Herald has a more-detailed review.