Windows Live Spaces

30 million blogs, and Microsoft expected 1% to move

Replaced
19902026

Windows Live Spaces was Microsoft's answer to MySpace and Yahoo 360: a blog, photo gallery, guestbook and profile attached to every Messenger account. It claimed 30 million blogs and 27 million monthly visitors at its height. When Microsoft closed it in 2010 and handed the migration to WordPress.com, it privately expected about 1 percent to bother.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2004
  2. December 2004 Launch
    MSN Spaces launches

    A blog, gallery and profile attached to every Messenger account.

  3. 2006
  4. 2006 Rebrand
    Renamed Windows Live Spaces

    Microsoft moves community services away from the MSN brand.

  5. 2007
  6. August 2007 Peak
    27 million unique visitors a month

    Distribution through Messenger does the work.

  7. 2010
  8. 27 September 2010 Shutdown announced
    Migration to WordPress.com announced

    Announced on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. 30 million blogs, six months to move.

  9. 29 September 2010 Decline
    The real number leaks

    Internal email puts expected migration at about 1 percent. Most blogs are dead.

  10. 2011
  11. 16 March 2011 Shutdown
    Spaces closes

    Content not migrated or exported is removed.

The site through time

Browse spaces.live.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Microsoft 2004–2011 Founded Launched as MSN Spaces, renamed Windows Live Spaces in 2006

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Monthly active users ▲ 27 million August 2007 Reported Estimated unique visitors per month at the height

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Microsoft announced on 27 September 2010 that Spaces would close and partnered with Automattic to migrate blogs to WordPress.com. Users had six months to move or have their content removed.

Our analysis: Spaces was enormous on paper and empty in practice. Internal Microsoft email obtained at the time put the expected migration at about 1 percent of the 30 million blogs, because most of them were long abandoned. It is the clearest example in this encyclopedia of the gap between a registered account and a user.

History [edit]

A blog attached to Messenger

MSN Spaces launched in December 2004, and was renamed Windows Live Spaces in 2006 when Microsoft moved its community services off the MSN brand. It gave every user a page with a blog, a photo gallery, lists, a guestbook and a profile, customisable with modules called gadgets.

Its real advantage was distribution. It was wired into Windows Live Messenger, so your contacts saw when you posted, and in countries where Messenger was how everybody talked, Spaces became where everybody wrote. By August 2007 it had an estimated 27 million unique visitors a month.

The number that was not real

On 27 September 2010, on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, Microsoft and Automattic announced that Spaces would close and that its users would be offered a one-click migration to WordPress.com. The headline figure was 30 million blogs, which would have made it one of the largest migrations in the history of the web.

Two days later BetaNews published internal Microsoft email putting the real expectation at roughly 1 percent. One executive noted plainly that most of the 30 million were dead. The blogs existed because accounts existed, and the accounts existed because Messenger did.

Six months

Users had six months to migrate or export before content was removed, and Spaces closed in March 2011. Matt Mullenweg, who runs Automattic, wrote at the time that this was the largest number of blogs anyone had ever moved at once.

What Spaces really demonstrated is how badly a raw account count describes a service. It is why every number on this site carries a label saying what was actually measured.

Similar projects

App.net Users paid for it, and it still was not enough 2012–2017 Vox Closed at 3:20 in the afternoon, and its name sold on 2006–2010 Open Diary Invented the comment, in 1998 1998–2014 Posterous Blogging by sending an email, bought and switched off 2008–2013 Pownce Eighteen months, and invitations sold on eBay 2007–2008 Typepad Where the BBC and Time blogged, deleted after 22 years 2003–2025

Sources [edit]

  1. MSN Spaces Closing, becomes WP.com Matt Mullenweg 27 September 2010 [archived]
  2. Microsoft: Windows Live Spaces already dead BetaNews 29 September 2010 [archived]

Last verified: 13 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).