MSN Spaces, a free service
currently available in beta version, is a
new offering from MSN that allows consumers to create
personal Internet Spaces - like a dynamic online
scrapbook - giving people a place to create and
update a Web log, or blog, and share their photos
and
music playlists.
The MSN Spaces beta, available in 26 markets and 14
languages, comes with a notification system that
informs people’s contacts about changes to their
Spaces to help bring people closer together.
People can start a Space with
just a few clicks, and then personalize it to reflect
their moods, likes and dislikes:
· Rich layout. Fifteen custom backgrounds and
five layout template choices allow consumers to customize
their MSN Spaces quickly.
· Web logs. The MSN Spaces blogging tool allows
people to publish and maintain online personal journals
and enables them to link to photos and other Web sites.
· Photo albums. Consumers can upload up to
10 MB of photos (250 images after compression) to their
Spaces sites and display them to others in slide shows.
· E-mail uploads. Consumers can upload photos
or blog postings to their Spaces from virtually any
e-mail service or e-mail-enabled mobile device.
· Music favorites and lists. Consumers can
create and manage lists of information that is important
to them, such as their favorite music, books or travel
destinations. Consumers can easily share playlists
through their Space with Microsoft® Windows Media® technologies.
With just two clicks, people can sample or purchase
a song on someone’s playlist through MSN Music.*
MSN Spaces is designed to help people express themselves
online while better connecting them with their friends,
family and other contacts:
Contact Cards. When a person clicks on a Contact Card
in a MSN Messenger or Hotmail® Contact list, the
card pops up and gives a sneak peek at that contact’s
Space – from its look and feel to the person’s
most recent postings. The Contact Card includes links
to the Space and those entries for easy access.
Gleaming. When a Spaces site is updated or content
is added, the MSN Messenger Contact icon of the Space’s
owner will light up, making it easy for friends and
family to know when there have been changes. This facilitates
more visits to a Space, faster responses to new postings
and closer bonds between Space owners and their contacts.
RSS. MSN Spaces also supports RSS 2.0, so consumers
can publish their Space to others by way of RSS viewers
and aggregators, including My MSN, scheduled to come
soon. This is another way to ensure that the people
who matter to a user can stay up to date on his or
her Space.
MSN Spaces Offers Protection and Control
MSN Spaces is designed to give consumers control over
how they share their Space information and who can
access it:
Permissions. Consumers have three permission control
settings on their MSN Spaces site, enabling them to
decide just how widely they want to share their content:
– Public: Viewable by anyone
– Contacts Only: Viewable only by their MSN
Messenger contacts
– Private: Viewable only by contacts whose e-mail
addresses are manually entered by the MSN Spaces author
or selected from an MSN Contact list
Controls. MSN Spaces gives the consumer control over
how others interact with his or her Space. MSN Spaces
includes settings that give each person power over
who views his or her Space and how people can interact,
read and comment on the Space. This includes the ability
to set up the Space so people can read but not comment.
Statistics. Consumers will be able to track visitor
statistics on their Spaces site, so they will know
how many people are visiting as well as other detailed
information.
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