It’s been awhile since checking in on the explosion of blog growth from MSN Spaces but the train hasn’t stopped rolling according to the following Microsoft press release:

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.

Firstly, congratulations to Microsoft and the hard working MSN Spaces team (or whatever the team is called these days?) including Mike Torres and Dare Obasanjo.

More towels seem warranted in this case. This is a good — or bad depending on your perspective — example of how difficult it can be to make blanket statements about Microsoft. A massive organization with far too many moving parts.

Before anybody claims I’m backpeddling on my feelings last Friday, no I’m not. No way am I taking back anything I said about towelgate, but I will admit suggesting that every department at Microsoft isn’t deserving of better compensation for their efforts is too big a generalization. Just take the towel money from the bad managers, executives and teams and give to those more deserving. Reallocation of dollars, not spending new ones that force customers like me to question luxury amenities vs. the quality of final products (security, bugs, etc). Or force conflicting decisions like asking 1,000 independent contractors to take a week off without pay. Robin Hood needs to get a crack at the Microsoft checkbook.

Which brings me back to some things still missing from MSN Spaces as a blog platform:

- ability to use our own domain
- ability to use our own CSS / design
- ability to (easily) export all our created content, no roach motel please
- ability to add microsoft gadgets (or third party gadgets) into MSN Spaces
- ability to remove all default categories from admin menu
- trackback functionality that actually works with other blog platforms (I’ve never been able to get Wordpress to trackback to MSN Spaces — what is my malfunction?)
- real ad revenue like the forthcoming MSN Adcenter contextul ads (that is coming, right?)

Now I suppose some/most of the above is what they would refer to as not their target blogger audience features which is why there has been no huge priority to add these items yet. But until these features are added they are going to continue competing more against MySpace “blogs” than they will against other blog platforms like TypePad/Movable Type and Wordpress. It’s possible they don’t want to compete against the popular blogging tools. Yet.

Dare writes: “We have lots of good stuff planned for y’all in the coming months.”

We’ve been hearing that for over a year and while a few new things have come out (the Amazon ad sharing, some API stuff, etc), I must be missing the major important new blog-related features? While it probably doesn’t sound like it, this isn’t necessarily a criticism because admittedly I’ve not been following the MSN Spaces as closely as I once was so please somebody update me to what good stuff has been missed? Where’s all the good blog-related cooking? Who are all these people getting MSN Spaces blogs? Are they sploggers, MySpace and LiveJournal refugees or what?

From a purely numbers perspective, it doesn’t really matter what has or hasn’t been added because everybody and their brother has an MSN Spaces blog. Those who don’t will have one next year by this time. I believe you get an MSN Spaces blog — correct me if I’m wrong please (Update: I’m wrong, thanks Dare) — if you get a Windows Live account profile.

This numbers PR game adds up to little incentive on Microsoft’s part to continue to innovate with MSN Spaces as a more niche blog platform — and more toward being an (ewww) social network IM blog hybrid — although I remain curious if that’s the feeling of the MSN Spaces team (or whatever they’re called these days)? I’m begging: please don’t give into that social networking pile of flaming dung.

Visiting Microsoft campus later today
I’m going to be up at Microsoft Redmond campus a little later today. My wife will be doing some tesing there. What building should I stop by and get the skinny from the horse’s mouths while killing a couple hours? And where can I lay my hands — and digital camera — on one of these highly coveted towels? Then again I bet some Microsoft employees would like to snap my hiney with those towels. Here’s your chance, Microsofties, we’re leaving in a couple hours.

Update 12:35pm PST: I fixed the misleading title to 101+ million blog visits instead of reading as “blogs.” I should know better since I did the math back in November 2005 (linked above already). That’s my bad there, sorry. Assuming the rate of three million new blogs per month, that means MSN Spaces actually has around 50 million blogs at the present time. Splogspot can’t have that many blogs. Thanks to Dare for the answers/corrections and would definitely like to hear the real numbers and/or if these numbers can be released. My number is merely a guess and certainly nothing official.

• MSN Spaces growing by 3+ million blogs a month
• Retraction: MSN Spaces not enforcing nofollow on all blog authors
• MSN China blogger smackdown: their country, their ballgame
• 10 MB MSN Spaces limit only for photos
• MSN Spaces 35 million users now have global content policy
• MSN spaces out in the blogosphere (BETA)