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.
Mike: make up a new name for what private spaces are, then. They aren’t blogs. Maybe they are “plogs.” For “private blogs.”
Mike: make up a new name for what private spaces are, then. They aren’t blogs. Maybe they are “plogs.” For “private blogs.”
[...] Mike Torres of the Live Spaces team just said that more than half of all Live Spaces are private. Um, Mike, you DO realize that private Web spaces are NOT blogs, right? [...]
Amazon has plogs – I thought of that too
I will surely let Marketing and PR know that you take issue with this. I could call it whatever I want and that wouldn’t change anything. I’m just 1/70,000.
We’ve always said Spaces is more than blogging alone, so I’ve personally never been a fan of calling it a blogging service. But Marketing isn’t my job.
Amazon has plogs – I thought of that too
I will surely let Marketing and PR know that you take issue with this. I could call it whatever I want and that wouldn’t change anything. I’m just 1/70,000.
We’ve always said Spaces is more than blogging alone, so I’ve personally never been a fan of calling it a blogging service. But Marketing isn’t my job.
[...] A interesting discussion has appeared over at Robert Scoble’s blog concerning Windows Live Spaces and facts/numbers regarding how many Spaces can actually be considered “blogs”. What started the discussion was Richard MacManus’s report of George Moore, General Mananger for Windows Live, reporting to folks at TechEd in New Zealand how Windows Live Spaces is “now the largest blogging service on the planet”. Mike Torres, Lead Program Manager for Windows Live Spaces, replied to Scoble’s questions regarding the validity of George Moore’s remark: “Approximately half (I don’t remember exact %) of all Windows Live Spaces are private and don’t send pings to any service (including search engines and our own updates page). These Spaces are hidden from the world in almost every way. And they are, in a lot of cases, the most active for obvious reasons. Spaces started as a communications tool for your Messenger contacts (friends and family) and that’s how a *lot* of people use it today.” [...]
I’ve always hated Microsoft for creating MSN Spaces. In a nutshell, they did essentially nothing to innovate when they created MSN Spaces.
The only reason people uses MSN Spaces is because it was pushed to them as part of MSN Messenger. People on my contact list barely write anything and they simply use it as an avenue for posting pictures, which I definitely don’t consider blogging.
Microsoft is lucky to have such a large userbase to push these services to. Otherwise they’d be dead in the water. They are definitely not one to brag about blogging.
I’ve always hated Microsoft for creating MSN Spaces. In a nutshell, they did essentially nothing to innovate when they created MSN Spaces.
The only reason people uses MSN Spaces is because it was pushed to them as part of MSN Messenger. People on my contact list barely write anything and they simply use it as an avenue for posting pictures, which I definitely don’t consider blogging.
Microsoft is lucky to have such a large userbase to push these services to. Otherwise they’d be dead in the water. They are definitely not one to brag about blogging.
I find your exclusion of “things that look like Flickr streams” to be artificially limiting. These are some of my favorites, and prompt as much discussion as any. The literalists who dominate software should recognize there’s a whole non-verbal universe, and I’m waiting for the day the rest of you discover near-full HTML in your blogs. Until then, LiveJournal’s fine with me. Count us. Or don’t. Write us off as non-serious journals. Doesn’t matter to me.
I find your exclusion of “things that look like Flickr streams” to be artificially limiting. These are some of my favorites, and prompt as much discussion as any. The literalists who dominate software should recognize there’s a whole non-verbal universe, and I’m waiting for the day the rest of you discover near-full HTML in your blogs. Until then, LiveJournal’s fine with me. Count us. Or don’t. Write us off as non-serious journals. Doesn’t matter to me.
Looks like MS is counting all spaces as a blog. (See Windows Live Stats section at http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/windows_live_contacts.php)
I agree those spaces that you linked to in your comments that said “There are no entries in this blog.” Should not be counted as blogs. I bet the majority of their 72 M “blogs” have this comment in them.
Looks like MS is counting all spaces as a blog. (See Windows Live Stats section at http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/windows_live_contacts.php)
I agree those spaces that you linked to in your comments that said “There are no entries in this blog.” Should not be counted as blogs. I bet the majority of their 72 M “blogs” have this comment in them.
All I have to say is, 72 million is a really high number and sounds awfully suspicious. Microsoft is desperate to have SOME slice of the web and, I’m sure, will do anything to convince themselves and others that they’ve succeeded.
All I have to say is, 72 million is a really high number and sounds awfully suspicious. Microsoft is desperate to have SOME slice of the web and, I’m sure, will do anything to convince themselves and others that they’ve succeeded.
We reported on the distribution of blogs in the blogpulse dataset used for the 3rd Annual Workshop on Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics at WWW 2006.
See http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/paper/html/id/299/Characterizing-the-Splogosphere for a paper with the data.
Our approach to differentiating echt blogs from splogs and from random feeds was to build a training set and then use it to train an SVM model. the accuracy for the blog/non-blog decision was about 98% and for the blog/splog decision was about 88%.
I think your 500 words and two posts a month constraint is quite reasonable. Generous, even.
We reported on the distribution of blogs in the blogpulse dataset used for the 3rd Annual Workshop on Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics at WWW 2006.
See http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/paper/html/id/299/Characterizing-the-Splogosphere for a paper with the data.
Our approach to differentiating echt blogs from splogs and from random feeds was to build a training set and then use it to train an SVM model. the accuracy for the blog/non-blog decision was about 98% and for the blog/splog decision was about 88%.
I think your 500 words and two posts a month constraint is quite reasonable. Generous, even.
[...] Robert Scoble asks Is Microsoft really the largest blog vendor? and proposes a methodology for estimating the number of blogs hosted by Windows Live and the other big blog hosting systems. [...]
Microsoft Sux!! Deleting files at network drive do not go to recycle bin. Stupid Bug.
Microsoft Sux!! Deleting files at network drive do not go to recycle bin. Stupid Bug.
[...] I’m starting to like the new Scoble, the one who doesn’t work for Microsoft: 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.” [...]
[...] Reading comments to Robert Scoble’s post questioning whether Microsoft really is the largest blog vendor I found this comment from Tim Finin of interest. Employing a machine learning model Tim and two of his associates at the University of Maryland conducted a study to characterise the Splogosphere. A PDF and powerpoint of the results are available here. [...]
I’ll leave my thoughts on this for a post, but I can tell you now that Spaces will still come out on top by your own criteria, Blogger is the only service that might come close (in terms of numbers), and yet the ratio of real blogs to splogs there is far, far worse than Spaces.
I’ll leave my thoughts on this for a post, but I can tell you now that Spaces will still come out on top by your own criteria, Blogger is the only service that might come close (in terms of numbers), and yet the ratio of real blogs to splogs there is far, far worse than Spaces.
[...] Robert Scoble reports that there are now 72 million blogs on Windows Live Spaces alone, this when Technorati tracks 50 (odd) million all up across the globe…and people don’t believe me when I say there is 300 million odd blogs out there on the internet because they tell me Technorati says there are 50 million…. [...]
According to the latest figures I have for the Chinese market MSN Spaces is the no.2, holding 15 percent of the market. That is decent, but not #1.
http://www.chinaherald.net/2006/07/blogs-market-share-internet-more-than.html
According to the latest figures I have for the Chinese market MSN Spaces is the no.2, holding 15 percent of the market. That is decent, but not #1.
http://www.chinaherald.net/2006/07/blogs-market-share-internet-more-than.html
The video of George’s keynote is up… http://www.microsoft.com/nz/events/teched/keynote.mspx
The video of George’s keynote is up… http://www.microsoft.com/nz/events/teched/keynote.mspx
Private blogs, whatever you want to call them, are still indexed by many search engines, just not Google. I know, because I had one at Diary-X for years, and when the server went bye-bye I got my archives from Yahoo caches. Believe me, I didn’t choose Diary-X for the privacy; I’ve always wondered about the brainpower of people who take the most powerful communication tool in the world and mark it “Don’t look over here!”
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but is it not possible that Microsoft has simply created a Space for every registered MSN Messenger user? This would account for the inflated numbers, and a quick email to someone at Microsoft should give you your answer.
I agree with most of your criteria, except I do believe that original images, whether photographs or artwork, should count as a blog post. There’s a reason it’s called multimedia.
Private blogs, whatever you want to call them, are still indexed by many search engines, just not Google. I know, because I had one at Diary-X for years, and when the server went bye-bye I got my archives from Yahoo caches. Believe me, I didn’t choose Diary-X for the privacy; I’ve always wondered about the brainpower of people who take the most powerful communication tool in the world and mark it “Don’t look over here!”
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but is it not possible that Microsoft has simply created a Space for every registered MSN Messenger user? This would account for the inflated numbers, and a quick email to someone at Microsoft should give you your answer.
I agree with most of your criteria, except I do believe that original images, whether photographs or artwork, should count as a blog post. There’s a reason it’s called multimedia.
[...] El punto es: [...]
The European blogosphere
http://www.eu.socialtext.net/loicwiki/index.cgi?summary_page
China’s New Obsession with Blogs and How Companies Can Benefit
“The total number of blogs in China will grow over 200% from 37 million in 2005 to nearly 120 million by the end of 2006.”
http://china.seekingalpha.com/article/13336
The European blogosphere
http://www.eu.socialtext.net/loicwiki/index.cgi?summary_page
China’s New Obsession with Blogs and How Companies Can Benefit
“The total number of blogs in China will grow over 200% from 37 million in 2005 to nearly 120 million by the end of 2006.”
http://china.seekingalpha.com/article/13336
Perhaps the difference between this dialog and the one you would have had a few months ago has to do with the facts you are searching for. Biggest doesn’t mean anything if you’re not the best for the most people.
Perhaps the difference between this dialog and the one you would have had a few months ago has to do with the facts you are searching for. Biggest doesn’t mean anything if you’re not the best for the most people.
I hope microsoft get ‘class actioned’ fined by the eu etc for this monopoly they just admitted – i have privacy concerns about yahoo and microsoft especially if i was in china.
I hope microsoft get ‘class actioned’ fined by the eu etc for this monopoly they just admitted – i have privacy concerns about yahoo and microsoft especially if i was in china.
[...] Robert Scoble has had some fun “auditing” Micorosoft’s Windows Live Spaces. In “Is Microsoft really the largest blog vendor?” Scoble challenges Microsoft’s assertions: Microsofties take it on face value that they host the most blogs. They even love shoving it in your face… 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. [...]
Robert,
500 words per month!!!
Even if you just blog 50 words per month…You are still bloging. I think the methadology should be that you blog once per month and 50 words.
Not everyone has the time you do to blog robert.
If the average population wrote 500 words per month there would be low productivity
Robert,
500 words per month!!!
Even if you just blog 50 words per month…You are still bloging. I think the methadology should be that you blog once per month and 50 words.
Not everyone has the time you do to blog robert.
If the average population wrote 500 words per month there would be low productivity
Nothing comes close to WordPress.
You’ve got the source, the themes, the plugins, the support, etc. And it’s free. I heart WordPress.
Nothing comes close to WordPress.
You’ve got the source, the themes, the plugins, the support, etc. And it’s free. I heart WordPress.
[...] Brandon LeBlanc explains: A interesting discussion has appeared over at Robert Scoble’s blog concerning Windows Live Spaces and facts/numbers regarding how many Spaces can actually be considered “blogs”. What started the discussion was Richard MacManus’s report of George Moore, General Manager for Windows Live, reporting to folks at TechEd in New Zealand how Windows Live Spaces is “now the largest blogging service on the planet”. Mike Torres, Lead Program Manager for Windows Live Spaces, replied to Scoble’s questions regarding the validity of George Moore’s remark… And Torres revealed that about 50% of Spaces are private and “hidden from the world in almost every way.” Scoble responded that the 50% weren’t really blogs and now the blogerati are in full cry chasing the topic. [...]
[...] A debate has erupted over the definition of blogs and the value of blog “influentials” as drivers of advertising CPM rates, which is so Old Media in the particulars it’s really quite astonishing. Scoble challenges Windows Live Spaces’ definition of a blog and then plants this lightening rod: What does Microsoft do when it says “we have the most blogs?” Or, when it says really ANYTHING about its Internet services? [...]
Robert,
I agree completely with your definition of a blog.
I also completely disagree that it is THE definition of a blog. Any more than there is A definition of religion.
Part of your book’s major message is that its the conversation. If you and I were in a debate, one might mistake our verbal communication as the only vehicle of the debate.
But anyone who watched Al Gore and George Bush would know that presentation is a big part of it.
Deaf people can also debate and not say a single word.
So if blogging is a naked conversation, I’d say it surely can be a stream of pictures. Neither you nor I choose to communicate that way. But others might and it weakens the blogging community to undermine those other forms of communications.
Robert,
I agree completely with your definition of a blog.
I also completely disagree that it is THE definition of a blog. Any more than there is A definition of religion.
Part of your book’s major message is that its the conversation. If you and I were in a debate, one might mistake our verbal communication as the only vehicle of the debate.
But anyone who watched Al Gore and George Bush would know that presentation is a big part of it.
Deaf people can also debate and not say a single word.
So if blogging is a naked conversation, I’d say it surely can be a stream of pictures. Neither you nor I choose to communicate that way. But others might and it weakens the blogging community to undermine those other forms of communications.
[...] Scoble is defining blogs, trying to show that Spaces is not the biggest blog vendor. [...]
Blanket Road korean
I am Karin, very interesting article that contained the information I was searching for in Google, thanks.
hah people defending msn spaces like they own it or something. its quite funny actualy.
seriously dudes, msn spaces as a blogging platform sucks ass, its cluttered, ugly, and slow.
and to claim the spaces is the largest blogging platform that is, is just rediculous.
hah people defending msn spaces like they own it or something. its quite funny actualy.
seriously dudes, msn spaces as a blogging platform sucks ass, its cluttered, ugly, and slow.
and to claim the spaces is the largest blogging platform that is, is just rediculous.