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thursday evening 26th january 2006 msn in their incredible stupidity took it upon themselves to change up everyones profiles forcing everyone to have a msn space instead of just a regular profile. trouble is is that they violated privacy because some peoples profiles had their real name on them. some had their email address on the new profiles. also if you just happened to have an msn space and it was set up on your chat account now people in chat when they do the "view profile" option will be taken directly to your msn space. this is outrageous. assume that you had a msn space set up that (you thought) only your family and close friends knew about - suddenly its accessible to everyone on chat. chatters were reporting unwanted unsolicited instant messages because chatters now had access to their email addresses.
did msn ask its customers/subscribers if we wanted this? no of course not. msn in keeping with its corporate culture of shoving down its customers throats whatever it wants to do did this with no prior warning other than what they were putting out that "ADULT RATED PROFILES" were to be deleted first from a date in december then finally from 01 jan 2006.
msn should immediately restore the much better oldstyle profiles.
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MSN Spaces Update a Little Bumpy
By Ed Oswald, BetaNews
January 27, 2006, 12:15 PM
Microsoft's MSN division rolled out a new version of its Spaces blogging platform on Thursday afternoon, but it was not without hiccups that caused service to be spotty for over a day following its release.
Users reported issues with image loading, as well as some features not loading correctly or at all. Spaces also seemed much slower than normal for many. "The service may be a little slow for a little while it stabilizes," MSN Spaces product manager Mike Torres told users.
The issues, however, did not prevent Torres from listing almost two dozen new features on his Web log late Thursday. Some of the more significant additions include a new search feature, a new advertising partnership that allows users to earn revenue, integration with Windows Live Contacts, larger photo storage space, shorter URLs, and Xbox Live integration.
The new search feature will enables users of the service to search for Spaces based on a keyword, a user's profile, or by popular interest across all Spaces. MSN has added the search functionality to the mobile version of Spaces as well.
MSN will now be allowing American and Canadian Spaces users to place advertising on their blogs through a partnership with Kanoodle. Participation in the feature would be voluntary.
Spaces will also integrate with Windows Live Contacts, a feature from Microsoft where users would be able to receive contact updates. The feature will be added throughout the company's suite of "Live" services over the next few months. When a contact changes their information, the address books of those subscribed to the data would change automatically.
In addition, Spaces is now more tightly integrated with Microsoft's Xbox Live service. This will include Xbox themes for the Space, as well as two modules that can be displayed: the Gamer Card and Xbox Live Recent Games.
"This feature has been the single biggest reason my gamer score is now clocking in at 500 instead of 0," Torres joked.
Other features include the expansion of photo storage from 30MB to 500 photos per month with no megabyte limit, shorter URLs that take "/members/" out of the address, new themes, enhanced commenting and profiles, and book list integration with Amazon.com.
"One of the things not mentioned above that I'm most excited about is the work we've put into the Spaces platform itself which will enable us to innovate faster and smarter over the next few months and years," Torres said. "This is just the beginning of a wave of coolness."
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tags: msn spaces Mike Torres Ed Oswald Beta News msn microsoft
