Is A 'Space' A Blog And Other Nerdy Stuff No One Cares About
If the whole blogging universe was Seattlest and everything that Seattlest reads (and you'll forgive us for often believing this is the case), there would be no such thing as Windows Live Spaces. In our universe you would say to someone, "Do you use Windows Live Spaces?" and they would respond, "What the hell are you talking about?"
Or maybe they'd pat you on the head and ask if your imaginary friend wanted some tea.
That's a long and unnecessarily rude way of saying that we don't use Windows Live Spaces, read anyone who uses Windows Live Spaces, or even know of anyone who uses Windows Live Spaces. No band has ever told us to check their shit out on Windows Live Spaces, and no one we know has ever posted a single photo to it. We actually feel compelled to explain what Windows Live Spaces even is: It's Microsoft's version of Myspace. You probably already know that because even though we like to pretend that we are our reader, it's not really the case, and our reader tends to know more about stuff than we do. Not only do you know what Windows Live- (oh CHRIST we cannot keep typing that out!) Let's call it something else, please. Not only do you know about it, but you probably use it. Microsoft, anyway, is claiming that it's the largest blog service that exists.
Scoble claims otherwise in a post over the weekend:
Microsofties take it on face value that they host the most blogs. They even love shoving it in your face. Yesterday someone who works on the Windows Live team was taunting me with “influentials don’t matter, we got to be #1 and we don’t care that there aren’t any influential bloggers using our stuff.”I was asking them why so few bloggers at BlogHer or Gnomedex use Windows Live Spaces, which is Microsoft’s blog and photo sharing service.
Today I see that George Moore, General Manager of Windows Live, just told a crowd in New Zealand that Windows Live is “now the largest blogging service on the planet.” At least according to Richard MacManus, who I’ve found to accurately report past events, and who is at TechED in New Zealand.
That's the first few paragraphs of the post and then there's a lot of wanking about "what is a blog" and whatnot.
Ok, we do need to paste his definition of a blog:
1) Have original content. Spam blogs that are copied off of somewhere else don’t count. 2) Have at least 500 words of new text-based content every month. Things that look like Flickr streams aren’t blogs, sorry. 3) Have at least two posts in at least the past 30 days. If you aren’t posting, you’re not blogging. 4) I don’t care if you have comments, have trackbacks, have blogrolls, or any of that.
An "influential" by the way, is meant to indicate someone whose blog is actually read or someone who is an opinion-maker online, and Scoble says that they don't exist at Windows Live Spaces. We know you could have parsed that one on your own.
Then back and forth in the comments and various other blogs throughout the weekend. "Windows Live Space aren't blogs," "Yes they are," "No they aren't," and so on until the Guardian felt compelled to jump in and say, "To add something, there are also things that aren't really blogs, they are just Web sites created using blogging software." Good one.
This is, of course, of interest to Robert Scoble, the Windows Spaces dev team, and at least one, but no more than 5 the 17 million users of the service.
What is actually interesting is Scoble commenting on Microsoft, his old employer, and commenting negatively at that. Is he itching to pick fights with Redmond after having lived under their roof for so long, or is he really that concerned about a non-existent service claiming to have the most blogs in the world? The thing is, no one would even pay attention to Windows Live Spaces and their grandiose claims if Scoble didn't so strenuously object, so in a very real sense he's still doing what he's always done, which is shill for Microsoft.
