REDMOND, Wash. — May 24, 2006 — MSN® Spaces is the most widely used blogging service worldwide with more than 100 million unique visitors, according to data released today by comScore Networks Inc. of Reston, Va., an independent Internet audience measurement and consulting company.
comScore World Metrix’s proprietary audience report for April 2006 showed the total number of unique visitors to MSN Spaces has more than doubled in the past 12 months, from 41.65 million to 101 million.* Figures compiled by comScore Media Metrix indicate that during April 2006, nearly one in seven Internet users worldwide had visited MSN Spaces.
“Blogging as a category has shown consistent and rapid growth over the last year all around the world and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of comScore Media Metrix. “The trend in more user-generated content represents a shift in the way that media is created and consumed online.”
MSN Spaces allows consumers to create personal Internet sites where they can express themselves in a variety of ways and interact with the important people in their life. The service provides people with a place to create and update a Web log, or blog, as well as share photos, music playlists and more. For example, more than 6 million photos are uploaded to the service each day, with more than 2.5 billion photos uploaded since MSN Spaces launched as a beta service in December 2004.
Now available in 30 markets and 16 languages, the next version of MSN Spaces, called Windows Live™ Spaces, is expected to launch later this year with additional functionality including a social networking service and the ability for developers to create gadgets, new features developed by hobbyists and partners, that can be added to a Space by users.
“Consumers are enjoying MSN Spaces in record proportions as they embrace the ability to more easily share their stories and stay in touch with the people they care about most,” said Moz Hussain, group product manager at Microsoft Corp. “As more people discover how easy this service is to use and how it enables them to share so many different things with the people they care about most, we’re confident that MSN Spaces will continue as the world’s most popular blogging destination.”
MSN Spaces can be found at http://spaces.msn.com.
About MSN and Windows Live
MSN attracts more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering compelling programmed content experiences to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide. Windows Live, a new set of personal Internet services and software, is designed to bring together in one place all the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with enhanced safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web. MSN and Windows Live will be offered alongside each other as complementary services. Some Windows Live services entered an early beta phase on Nov. 1, 2005; these and future beta updates can be found at http://ideas.live.com. Windows Live is available at http://www.live.com.
MSN is located on the Web at http://www.msn.com. MSN worldwide sites are located at http://www.msn.com/worldwide.ashx.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
* Statistics do not include unique visitors in some countries, including China where MSN Spaces has over 20 million unique visitors.
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