After AOL introduced AOL Journals and Google acquired Blogger to offer it as a blog publishing service, you knew Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) would not stand pat. Last week, Microsoft's MSN Internet division introduced a preliminary version of MSN Spaces, a new blogging service "for the masses", as quoted by Blake Irving, an MSN corporate VP.

Any subscriber to Microsoft services such as Hotmail or MSN Messenger can setup a free blog on MSNSpaces.  The blog publishing service is supported by subscriptions and advertising revenues.  MSDN Channel 9 has a 14 minute video demo of the MSNSpaces' features, some of which include user restricted access, photo albums, favorite song lists, etc. Readers can subscribe to their favorite blogs via the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) web publishing system. 

Leslie Walker (techie reporter from the Washignton Post) testdrove the system and reported that MSNSpaces still is pretty much a work in progress.  Of course, in the future, Microsoft will devote its impressive resources towards this endeavor as well, thereby improving this offering.  Time will tell what the user adoption curve will be like, but thus far, I find that the existing Blogware system that I am using for Technology Futurist (courtesy of the folks from Tucows, who so generously donated the space on their server) offers blogmeisters a much richer environment and customization features.