Edited to add: This update is added one year later, and sure enough Windows Live Spaces closed. I hate being right. X
I have had a feeling for the last several months that my beloved community of Windows Live Spaces will soon be a thing of the past.
I have been a member of Spaces since 2005 when it was MSN Spaces. I have loved the Spaces community, but I do not think my community has long to live for the following reasons:
When Windows Live started a year ago, the available themes did not match any of Spaces available themes. Spaces has looked and been treated like a separate entity from the rest of Windows Live from the onset.
“Spaces” has been taken off most headers, and can only be found under “other”.
The banner ads were taken off of Spaces a year ago when Wave 3 came out. Spaces is not a money maker for Live.
Windows Live administration blogs have been gradually moved out of “Spaces” into another location. For example, the blog “Inside Windows Live” is actually hosted outside of Windows Live. How funny is that….
Windows Live Clubhouse now accepts other types of blogs, besides Spaces.
Windows Live Writer works with other blogs as well as Spaces. Writer is used to post to the Windows Live Clubhouse where Windows Live products are promoted.
Windows Live administration has repeatedly ignored our Abuse Reports. Long after Code of Conduct violations are reported, accounts remain open and are free to post spam comments in our Spaces blog comments.
This last reason, the fact that garbage has been allowed to take over our community, is the biggest reason that I think that Windows Live has no future plans for Spaces.
For these reasons, and more that I can’t remember right now, I do not think that Windows Live Spaces has long to live….
What do you think?
X
My related posts from the past year:
- “Windows Live Spam Central Reporting Service” is open for business!
- I wish to thank the academy…. (Update on Windows Live Spam situation at end of page)
- Please be aware of the Code of Conduct and report violations as you see them. Let’s keep Windows Live Town clean!
- A very short question for Windows Live Administration. Edited to add: Thank you Windows Live Admin for adding “Spam” to the list of “Report Abuse” offences.
- Dear Windows Live: Here is the latest failed result of my trying to report an account that does absolutely nothing but post spam. Can’t you do something about this?
- I wish to report an inconsistency within the Windows Live Code of Conduct.
- Windows Live, please add “Spamming” to the “Report Abuse” pull-down options for Spaces.
- Windows Live: Please crack down on Spaces set up to sell Viagra and send spam.
- There is a problem in in Windows Live.com: People are setting up Spaces as businesses, and then posting spam in our comments.
- Windows Live: What is official policy on setting up a space for business and spamming in comments. Detailed question with copy of abuse report and response.
X-Evolutionist's Space 
Nah; we ain\’t leaving. Too many of us. Remember this service goes right around the world:-)
I sure hope not, but you make a compelling arguement thats for sure!Happy HolidaysLewis
I hope that Spaces is not closing, but I can\’t help thinking of that as an option with the way things are going. (as stated in this blog) X
Have you personally emailed anyone on the Windows Live team and asked about this?Perhaps something bigger is in the works?
@Rob: I\’ve talked to several admin people about spam in the last few months. Some promised to look into the spam situation and get back to me. The spammer accounts were never closed. In my imagination, each person found out that spaces is going out the window, anyway, so they never got back to me. It\’s just a theory. X
Spaces won\’t be shut down as long as the advertising sales staff can show potential clients an impressive number of hits on Live Spaces. Dozens of abuse reports over the past 10 months have resulted in my recieving 2 replies and zero action. All we represent to the Live Team, if there really is a Live team, are numbers on a hit counter. Spaces is what we make of it. They don\’t care!
This is a very sad state of affairs. You\’ve done most of the work for them X, and still, no real person will take action to block these spammers – their ip\’s – from harassing WLS users. Very sad. And yes, ominous.You know, l seriously miss the old search people feature with the whole page dedicated to searching people. l used to love cruising blogs. l haven\’t "found" any new friends in ages. lt\’s been a little more than a year since wave 3. When is wave 4 going to arrive?
@Gerry – no way of leaving comments on there. I just looked!
I\’m afraid I have to agree, and as you know I\’ve been saying so for months, I had my suspicions when there was no update to our space/blog page, accept that we lost fonts, live writer can blog to other sites, and I suspect more will be added. Lack of ANY info, be it about our space, or reporting problems. and people are already leaving. If the news was good, there would have been, I\’m sure something about an update. But they steadfastly refuse, to give any news to quell our worries. I also believe they will leave the profile page and we may still have the ability to blog, but our actual space will soon be history. Like you I\’ve been on here since very nearly the beginning, and will be sorry to see it go.
I haven\’t seen anything, or read anything that would indicate it was shutting down. It is quite widely used around the world. Sure there are people leaving, but there are others coming in too. The thing that hits spaces hard is how someone decides to make big changes to everyones private space and does it without asking us if we want it. Spaces lost a lot of people the last time they did that. They shouldn\’t fool around with our spaces with out asking what we want first. I almost left too last time.
For me it\’s just become too awkward to use. Beautifullyb simple to begin with, you could browse other spaces that weren\’t necessarilly your \’friends\’ allowing you you to \’meet\’ new people. Those I did meet, I now keep in touch with on facebook.What the heck is a \’skydrive\’? – who first needed one?Even the new messenger has been tinkered with so much as to make it convoluted to get onto spaces from there.I\’ve gone back to using hotmail as a simple web-mail presence – no more – no less. Very rarely come on spaces now due to the above.sad – but some techies see it as progress……
Skydrive? It\’s a virtual hard disk, Simon. You get a total of 25 free gigs of space to use as you like.
Hi X,I really hope you are wrong about Spaces "going away" but I too have the same concerns that the Live Team, if it exists, does not seem very interested in "fixing" whats wrong with Spaces, particularly when it comes to comment spammers. Hopefully we are all wrong and we will all see a shiny new Spaces with Wave 4. Let\’s keep the faith!
@Everybody: Thank you everybody for your comments on this topic. Your posts will help show that there is not just one crazy lady concerned about the spam problem in spaces — that it is a big problem that effects all of us. X
I read about on the new inside Windows Live blog. No mention of why they did abandon the Spaces ship. Maybe spam? I think that new blog runs of a coment spam blocking service. Other blogging services are doing what they can to stop spam why cant WL
I just checked comments and boom 3 spam comments. Good thing Windows7 requires WL to keep Parental controlls or most would bail.Come on WL team fix this or shut down spaces, make up your mind!
@Curtis: I get extra spam whenever I talk about spam. I think there is somebody in my network who is a spammer since they know when I\’m on the war path. Then, they spam my spam posts. Seriously. X
The WLS team space stopped accepting comments long before I started blogging here last winter. The word I got from several long time bloggers was that the team space was getting plowed under with spam and abusive comments so they just bailed. Funny you should mention getting spam after mentioning it here. I haven\’t had much of it in quite a while. All of a sudden this afternoon I\’m getting it in CHINESE!
Quite honestly, because I don\’t do much here now, I might pop off and just have Bing as a homepage, but I don\’t want to lose me Hotmail account!
l want to know that all my friends will be in the same place. lf the day comes when Spaces disappear, l want to be able to find everyone.
It\’s a good thing that so many of us are on other sites like Facebook and Twitter. We have alternate ways of finding each other if need be. But, I don\’t think Windows Live is going any place. It is just the "Spaces" aspect of Windows Live that they have abandoned. In my humble opinion, cutting it loose was always the plan. Why else have different themes? Spaces never matched the rest of Windows Live. I am willing to be proved wrong, and I hope I am. But, my evidence is pretty strong…..X
I honestly fail to see the point of Spaces\’ existence anymore. In Wave 3 they were pushing Facebook and Twitter integration and that I can see continuing. But Spaces is just redundant IMO. When everyone nowadays is mostly on Facebook, what is the point of Spaces? Where is there any advantage in Spaces over Facebook? I would just kill it off in Wave 4 already and keep on building up the Facebook/Twitter integration with Messenger and that. It\’s not like Spaces has really taken off in popularity…
Spaces is more or less like Windows Live\’s Blogger competitor, so it doesn\’t necessarily have to have the same themes you see yourself. The fact that very few Windows Live blogs are hosted on Spaces is terrible. It shows a complete lack of faith in their own product. All Google blogs are hosted on their own Blogger service. I was actually considering switching to a self hosted WordPress installation simply because of the lack of key features, but I\’ll probably wait to see what Wave 4 offers. If nothing, then I\’ll probably be switching.
I ve read though this a few times as well as your comments. Wonderful blog . Really got me thinking about a few things here and really the branches of LS keep on coming. Have an awesome day
What is wave 3 and wave 4? Will anyone answer this for me, I am fairly new here.
@Dewey: The "Waves" are the big changes. Last year was a big change when "Windows Live" began. Before that, we were in "MSN Spaces". There is another big change in the works. Nobody knows what it will be, or when it will be, but there will be a big change. That big change will be Wave 4. X
Spam sucks. And it sucks double when I get a \’you have a windows live message\’ in my mailbox (shades of \’you\’ve got mail\’ from aeons ago) and – guess what – it\’s spam. Oh, look, a handy \’Report abuse\’ button… that expects me to jump through nineteen different hoops before it can be submitted. And when I do all that – nothing happens. Not an electronic bloody sausage. Bah, bah and thrice bah. The world\’s going to hell in a handbasket. Merry Christmas!
" X" Thank you
I will turn out the light.
Hi X,I just had a Spam private message sent to me from China. I guess someone really is watching your site!
while you complain about the relatively unimportant issue of spam – total access to the www has been removed – control has reverted to the big brothers of disinformation. How long will it be before the \’comments\’ facility is removed? Facebook threatens to become a \’members only\’ paid subscription \’service\’ as do many sources of hereto \’free\’ information. The issue of preventing individuals world wide to speak to each other must be the only political platform of agreement between totalitarian states and the so called "free" western societies. The lights went out several years ago – and I am running out of candles !!
HOORAY for LG this is so true, my lights are dim, just hope and pray that they will get brighter soon.
Spam wonderful spam. Those of of a certain age will know this.I had a painful childhood experience involving spam. At school a dinner lady forced me to eat a spam fritter. I was really traumatized. Oddly nowadays I really like spam with rice for lunch.Back to the topic. I managed to fiddle around with my hotmail to hardly get any spam. Not entirely certain this was good. I seem to get no mail now. The Nigerians still manage to send me invitations to inherit millions.
@Gerry: That\’s a good idea. I don\’t want to get too greedy, though. If they just acted on our Abuse Reports and closed the comment spammers\’ accounts then I\’d be happy. X
I just made a comment over there as well not that it will do any good.
Windows Live admin: If you want to know what we are talking about (since Abuse Reports are ignored), log into The Clubhouse Space: http://communityclubhouse.spaces.live.com/and check the recent comments: http://profile.live.com/recentcomments/I get notifications for blog comments, and since Marcus has been gone the spammers have posted dozens of spam comments. Not pretty! X
Well, I joined it tonight. At least it\’s there and titled for Windows Live so I wouldn\’t give up yet. Do you know Technogran?
@Jen: I\’m not saying that Windows Live is going anywhere. It is just Spaces that I\’m talking about. It\’s just funny that the "Inside Windows Live" blog is not in a Windows Live Space, that\’s all. Yes, I know TG. X
She\’s also raising dust about Windows Live. Trouble is, if people read enough blogs like this, surely (and I\’m not trying to be cruel here) people will possibly assume it\’s time to saddle up and saunter off somewhere else. Wish there wasn\’t so much defeatism.
@X Yea funny the blog is hosted elsewhere. Probally on WordPress.org software. WordPress has Askimet spam prevention. Hacked me off at the last post they posted on there regarding comments. What a joke!
I think they\’re either too busy on wave 4, or they\’ve just given up entirely and are hoping it will quietly dissappear. The abuse reporting system seems to be completly automated just like most other customer service systems, which will be why we always get the standard responce when we report something. However, it doesn\’t seem sophisticated enough to construct the reply based on what you have already told them (it). It\’s sad I know, but I think it will either be severely streamlined (perhaps Live Blogs without all the bells and whistles) or will go alltogether.
Ed: You mention they might be too busy on Wave 4. That might be so. But, there a customer service adage about the benefits of keeping customers verses going out and looking for new customers. Hmmm. "Customers" implies making money. I just thought of another reason that Spaces might be going out the door. In Wave 3, they took off the banner ads. Spaces is not a money maker at all. Maybe they will keep Spaces, but charge us a subscription for the service…. X
Hi X, I think there will be a Wave 4. Here is a link to a website that justs reports news about Windows Live: http://liveside.net/ They have already been talking about Wave 4, but so far nothing has been revealed about any future for Spaces. You are right that there is no money from Spaces without advertising. I wonder if they will just steer people to use WordPress or something else since you can already tie other blogging services into Windows Live. One thing I learned from looking at Technogran\’s sites is that she has her WordPress and Blogger blogs already linked to Windows Live, so I connected in my Blogger blog too. It costs Microsoft nothing to have these sites linked in since they don\’t have to maintain them at all. Also, WordPress is set up to use Windows Live Writer, and Microsoft has written about that not too long ago but hasn\’t mentioned Spaces in a long time. If they do eliminate Spaces I will just shut down over here and stay on Blogger (and occasionally Facebook) since I am using Gmail and other Google services anyway. It would be sad to see it go though, I think they took the whole Windows Live thing in the wrong direction by trying to force people to be in a network instead of just letting them chose what they wanted for themselves.
To comment on Gerry\’s note, I\’m not satisfied with WordPress or any other blogging service. Interesting points X….I know it seems that Live Spaces has been ignored, but what other site offers blogging and 25GB of photo albums tied into the same website? Obviously everyone here loves it, which I\’m not questioning, but I guess I\’m just more dumbfounded that MSoft doesn\’t see the benefit of such a gem in Live Spaces… I don\’t think there is any other blogging service that allows you to tie in your photos and videos into the same webpage as Live Spaces, and for that I really hope they don\’t shut it down.
@Everybody: I\’m happy that this blog has gotten so much response. Of course, I hope I am wrong about Spaces being closed. I\’m just trying to call attention to the issues that Spaces users have, and hope the right people see it…. X
It looks like Spaces will indeed be included in Wave 4. http://bit.ly/4tWmHv
@Greg: Thanks for the link and the news. X
i just got here, this is an interesting post. so what does your crystal ball have to say abou live itself, and office live small business?
Thanks Greg for the update… good to know there is still life left in it!!
@Ben: Yes, there is still life in it, but sometimes you still have to poke it with a stick. X
Hi can you give me a update on what the latest word on live spaces. i been working all week and the fact is that you have to intergate your blog into facebbook.that is where all the action is .
I have just landed in Live Spaces and your blog sounds like me two years ago…. You see, I was a committed loyal member of Yahoo 360 (since 2005) then things started to change..Yahoo abandoned us, they couldn\’t care about Code of Conduct anymore, they basically let us do whatever we wanted with no consequence….. it was all for one and one for all…. we could smell something was up, then they closed us down in July 09! Here I am nearly 8 months later, wondering aimlessly online, still trying to find a new home….. Could this be my new home???
@Ottawa Gardens Gardens: I\’m sorry, I don\’t know anything about what\’s going to happen with Windows Live. I don\’t know what changes, if any, will be made in Spaces in Wave 4. X
@Tricky: Welcome to Windows Live! I love the Spaces neighborhood. Our spaces can be personallized to our heart\’s desire. I tried out Yahoo 360, too. Spaces. is so much better! Right now, I have a pet peeve about Spaces that I hope they fix soon. But, all and all, I love it here. I hope you put down roots and stay. Let me know if you have any questions about getting started. X