Interesting news at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this morning: Microsoft is shutting down its Windows Live Spaces blogging service and helping its seven million bloggers migrate over to Automattic’s WordPress.com. Spaces bloggers will be able to recreate their blogs on WordPress or download their data so they can make other arrangements, and they have a reasonably generous six months to make a decision before Microsoft shutters Spaces. And a new integration feature will let WordPress.com users ping their Windows Live buddies whenever they’ve published a new post.
I suppose that there are some Spaces users who considered using WordPress.com and opted for Microsoft’s service instead, but I suspect they’re far outnumbered by newbies who chose Spaces simply because it’s been the default Windows Live blogging service until now. Overall, it sounds like a good move for everyone involved: Spaces bloggers get an outstanding blog platform that’s evolving rapidly (rather than Spaces, which wasn’t), Microsoft doesn’t have to try and compete in a field that’s not core to its success, and WordPress.com gets lots of new members.
(I cheerfully admit to a bias here, since Technologizer is on WordPress.com–using the VIP version of the service–and I wouldn’t swap it for Spaces or any other blogging platform on the planet.)