Is Microsoft really the largest blog vendor?

August 20, 2006 By

Microsofties take it on face value that they host the most blogs. They even love shoving it in your face. Yesterday someone who works on the Windows Live team was taunting me with “influentials don’t matter, we got to be #1 and we don’t care that there aren’t any influential bloggers using our stuff.”

I was asking them why so few bloggers at BlogHer or Gnomedex use Windows Live Spaces, which is Microsoft’s blog and photo sharing service.

Today I see that George Moore, General Manager of Windows Live, just told a crowd in New Zealand that Windows Live is “now the largest blogging service on the planet.” At least according to Richard MacManus, who I’ve found to accurately report past events, and who is at TechED in New Zealand.

So, that made me itch and when I have an itch I want to scratch it.

Here’s my what’s itching me:

1) Is Windows Live Spaces really used as a blog service very often?
2) Is Microsoft only counting when it’s used as a blog service, or is it counting all uses of Windows Live Spaces?
3) Do other services actually have more “real” blogs? At least percentagewise?

Now, I know that WordPress.com (currently the service that most of the “in crowd” is recommending) only has about 300,000 blogs. Microsoft is claiming 72 million blogs.

So, over the next few hours I’m gonna do some analysis and see if I can find out how much overcounting there’s going on (there is SOME overcounting, based on my initial looks at http://spaces.live.com and http://www.weblogs.com — I see a whole bunch of things there that don’t look like blogs at all).

First, let’s define what a blog is, at least enough to count for this purpose.

1) Have original content. Spam blogs that are copied off of somewhere else don’t count.
2) Have at least 500 words of new text-based content every month. Things that look like Flickr streams aren’t blogs, sorry.
3) Have at least two posts in at least the past 30 days. If you aren’t posting, you’re not blogging.
4) I don’t care if you have comments, have trackbacks, have blogrolls, or any of that.

Here’s my methodology.
1) I’m going to pull the last hour’s worth of content that was published to each of the services, as reported to weblogs.com as of 3:52 p.m. today (before I post this so no one has time to monkey with the results).
2) I’m going to also visit the home pages of http://spaces.live.com and www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com and www.typepad.com and report on the percentage of blogs that I find that have been published to their “most recently published” pages are actually blogs.

Add all those percentages together and find an average. Then take that average to the reported number of blogs on each service and see if Microsoft is still #1.

Does that sound like a good methodology? Any changes you’d make?

One thing that’ll be interesting is to compare the percentages today with percentages on, say, Wednesday since I’d expect more “everyday people” to be blogging today, while on Wednesday I’d expect to see more corporate bloggers, which, my thesis is, will skew more away from Windows Live Spaces.

What do you think?

What results do you expect to see from such an exercise?

Disclaimers, Maryam, my wife, uses Windows Live Spaces. I use WordPress.com. Our book blog, Naked Conversations, is on Typepad. My son used to be on Google Blogger, but he is now on WordPress.com too.

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  • http://advisor-norris.spaces.live.com Advisor-Norris

    In my opinion Scoble, I believe your definition of blogging is too narrow. A blog is a short web log containing text, photos and/or links to other sites. The term is too broad to narrow down like you have done. However, I will be interested in reading your results and data analysis.

    Wikipedia’s Definition of Blogging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging)

    Advisor-Norris

  • http://advisor-norris.spaces.live.com/ Advisor-Norris

    In my opinion Scoble, I believe your definition of blogging is too narrow. A blog is a short web log containing text, photos and/or links to other sites. The term is too broad to narrow down like you have done. However, I will be interested in reading your results and data analysis.

    Wikipedia’s Definition of Blogging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging)

    Advisor-Norris

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  • http://www.litwc.com/ Patrick Havens

    Interesting, very interesting. At Wordcamp a few weeks ago this very subject came up. “What is a blog” The best we came up with was:

    A Sequential series of posts that try to draw you to conversation through words, pictures, video, and *cast

    I see how you rate it as being generous. But I could also see a blog having at least a 50 word post once a month being closer to the truth for a lot of blogs. I’d say 500 words and 2 posts a usuable blog.

    Interesting back and forth and as you can guess I’d vote for WordPress, but I’d guess either Blogger or MySpace as the top blogging sites.

  • http://www.litwc.com Patrick Havens

    Interesting, very interesting. At Wordcamp a few weeks ago this very subject came up. “What is a blog” The best we came up with was:

    A Sequential series of posts that try to draw you to conversation through words, pictures, video, and *cast

    I see how you rate it as being generous. But I could also see a blog having at least a 50 word post once a month being closer to the truth for a lot of blogs. I’d say 500 words and 2 posts a usuable blog.

    Interesting back and forth and as you can guess I’d vote for WordPress, but I’d guess either Blogger or MySpace as the top blogging sites.

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  • http://joshsnyder.spaces.live.com/ Josh Snyder

    Spaces missing influentals & business? Could be that some of the influentals have read the Terms of Use which isn’t good for anyone who wants to protect their intellectual property.

    1. There currently is not a limitation to how long you grant rights to the Public for use of your content.

    2. There currently is not a limitation to how or where the Public can sub-licence your content in any medium in any edited form. By posting your content you grant the public this right.

  • http://joshsnyder.spaces.live.com/ Josh Snyder

    Spaces missing influentals & business? Could be that some of the influentals have read the Terms of Use which isn’t good for anyone who wants to protect their intellectual property.

    1. There currently is not a limitation to how long you grant rights to the Public for use of your content.

    2. There currently is not a limitation to how or where the Public can sub-licence your content in any medium in any edited form. By posting your content you grant the public this right.

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  • http://jayhawkfever.blogspot.com/ Sue

    I don’t know if Windows Live is the largest, but I do know when they made the switch over to Live, they screwed so much up. MSN Spaces is a nightmare to deal with now. Many of us have begun our blogs at Blogger and WordPress. Trying to make the move, but still keeping the MSN space open until we train people to go to the new space. So many Windows Live users have begun the move.

    I’m interested in hearing your results.
    Sue

  • http://jayhawkfever.blogspot.com Sue

    I don’t know if Windows Live is the largest, but I do know when they made the switch over to Live, they screwed so much up. MSN Spaces is a nightmare to deal with now. Many of us have begun our blogs at Blogger and WordPress. Trying to make the move, but still keeping the MSN space open until we train people to go to the new space. So many Windows Live users have begun the move.

    I’m interested in hearing your results.
    Sue

  • Doug Kirschman

    I just recently started using MS spaces. They have a bata tool called Windows Live Writer that is actually pretty decent.

    I can tell you that I did a lot of surfing on spaces, and most of what I saw were not blogs in the strictest sense. I can say that with 70+ million sites, even if five percent are blogs, that’s still 3.5 million.

    Another interesting thing to note is that this is perhaps Microsoft’s only web project that hasn’t totally failed. The interface is pretty easy, the technology is pretty decent and now, with Live Writer, one can blog if they wish.

    All you anti-MS people need to take some pills. You can hurt yourself that way.

  • Doug Kirschman

    I just recently started using MS spaces. They have a bata tool called Windows Live Writer that is actually pretty decent.

    I can tell you that I did a lot of surfing on spaces, and most of what I saw were not blogs in the strictest sense. I can say that with 70+ million sites, even if five percent are blogs, that’s still 3.5 million.

    Another interesting thing to note is that this is perhaps Microsoft’s only web project that hasn’t totally failed. The interface is pretty easy, the technology is pretty decent and now, with Live Writer, one can blog if they wish.

    All you anti-MS people need to take some pills. You can hurt yourself that way.

  • http://jayhawkfever.blogspot.com/ Sue

    Hey baby, I’m not anti-MSN. Since they switched to Live, everything has slowed to a snail pace when trying to load pages or move around and they now have made a pain for people outside of MSN to leave a comment. I’m starting to remove things like the weather module to see if my page will load faster.

    Sue : )

  • http://jayhawkfever.blogspot.com Sue

    Hey baby, I’m not anti-MSN. Since they switched to Live, everything has slowed to a snail pace when trying to load pages or move around and they now have made a pain for people outside of MSN to leave a comment. I’m starting to remove things like the weather module to see if my page will load faster.

    Sue : )

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  • Nathan

    I think MSN Spaces goes after a completely different type of blogger than wordpress or blogspot. The MSN Spaces blogger is typically into sharing their own personal experiences with there friends and family, where I think the wordpress (and blogspot to a lesser extent) are used more by people that have something to say to the world (e.g. scoble, seth godin, gladwell, search engine watch… or the influencers). In that sense, I think spaces completes with flickr and Yahoo 360, much more than they compete with wordpress (or blogspot).

  • Nathan

    I think MSN Spaces goes after a completely different type of blogger than wordpress or blogspot. The MSN Spaces blogger is typically into sharing their own personal experiences with there friends and family, where I think the wordpress (and blogspot to a lesser extent) are used more by people that have something to say to the world (e.g. scoble, seth godin, gladwell, search engine watch… or the influencers). In that sense, I think spaces completes with flickr and Yahoo 360, much more than they compete with wordpress (or blogspot).

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  • http://www.sohbettc.com/ sohbet

    Link to Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger » Is Microsoft really the largest blog vendor?

  • http://www.sohbettc.com sohbet

    Link to Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger » Is Microsoft really the largest blog vendor?

  • http://www.kenandogulu.us/ kenandogulu

    Im not arguing or anything, just intruiged as to what we now constitute as a blog.

  • http://www.kenandogulu.us kenandogulu

    Im not arguing or anything, just intruiged as to what we now constitute as a blog.

  • Can Bulut

    Thank you

  • http://www.mekansohbet Can Bulut

    Thank you

  • http://www.nakliyatlar.net/ nakliyat

    I don’t agree with you ..Sorry.I like microsoft.

  • http://www.nakliyatlar.net nakliyat

    I don’t agree with you ..Sorry.I like microsoft.

  • http://www.marikina.gov.ph/mrknaforum/forum/viewthread?thread=3649 esticsinomi

    Communications
    In a rapidly moving news environment, FDF operates a 24/7 press office and provides communications support to members FDF is the voice of the UK food and drink manufacturing industry. We work hard to promote the interests of the UK’s most important manufacturing sector.

  • http://www.marikina.gov.ph/mrknaforum/forum/viewthread?thread=3649 esticsinomi

    Communications
    In a rapidly moving news environment, FDF operates a 24/7 press office and provides communications support to members FDF is the voice of the UK food and drink manufacturing industry. We work hard to promote the interests of the UK’s most important manufacturing sector.

  • http://www.hexdizayn.com/ Tasarim

    Thanks for the content….. :)

  • http://www.hexdizayn.com/ Tasarim

    Thanks for the content….. :)

  • http://www.artbank.ch/Gallery/gallery.html marcel reischnitzer

    Hi, everyone. I am new to blogs and wants some advice on how to use the technology and RSS feeds for my site more effectively. I have a gallery: http://www.artbank.ch/Gallery/gallery.html

    and want to add the most tech advanced blog on this page. What is the best way to do it? Shall I do it on the same page or add another?

    Cheers

  • http://www.artbank.ch/Gallery/gallery.html marcel reischnitzer

    Hi, everyone. I am new to blogs and wants some advice on how to use the technology and RSS feeds for my site more effectively. I have a gallery: http://www.artbank.ch/Gallery/gallery.html

    and want to add the most tech advanced blog on this page. What is the best way to do it? Shall I do it on the same page or add another?

    Cheers

  • http://www.steel-billet.com/ Çelik Çubuk

    nice article and its really true.

  • http://www.steel-billet.com Çelik Çubuk

    nice article and its really true.

  • http://www.npsperde.com/ perde

    Im not arguing or anything, just intruiged as to what we now constitute as a blog.

  • http://www.npsperde.com perde

    Im not arguing or anything, just intruiged as to what we now constitute as a blog.

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