Blogging is a medium whose skyrocketing popularity in both the consumer and enterprise spaces is widely credited with how simple and easy it made publishing text on the Web. Already, however, Microsoft has single-handedly introduced what many consider a significant variation to the original stripped-down approach to blogging with its MSN Spaces service.
Blogging services and software traditionally have provided a simple core functionality for creating online journals easily. These services generally are built on open platforms so that users, if interested, can add extra features to their blogs and integrate them with third-party services to add capabilities.
However, with MSN Spaces, Microsoft is delivering a pre-set suite of blogging and complementary services on a platform that doesn't allow for much manual tweaking and extension on the part of the end-user.