Mary Joe Foley reports that Microsoft will launch its weblog publishing service, Microsoft Spaces sometime this week. The service has been available in Japan since August. It will compete with Google’s Blogger and Blogspot services as well as other web-based blogging services like Typepad.
MSN is expected to tout MSN Spaces as a direct competitor to blog-creation and hosting tools, such as Blogger, Blog*Spot, LiveJournal and TypePad. Microsoft also will position MSN Spaces as a way to allow users to more easily share photo albums and music lists, too, insiders said.
Foley also reports that MS might allow users to post to their MS Spaces blogs via IM once a new version of MSN Messenger is released in early ’05.