Blogger Juha Saarinen has found out that ‘Windows Live Spaces’ censorships your thoughts. According to the blogger, apparently the word porn is prohibited on Windows Live Spaces.
I had to find out for myself; therefore I joined Windows Live Spaces and attempted to make a post with the word ‘porn’ in my title. It flagged my post with a message that one of the words that I used was prohibited.
Is this censorship or good sense?
Seeing how I had already created an account I figured that I might as well try out Windows Live Spaces social networking and blogging services.
I experienced extremely slow loading time and it kept freezing my browser. Microsoft states that Windows Live Spaces system requirements are that you must have “Internet Explorer® browser software version 6.0 Service Pack 1 or later must be installed on the computer, though it does not need to be the default browser. (The default browser can be FireFox 1.5, Safari 4.1 or Opera 9.0, for instance),” nonetheless it didn’t make much difference if I used IE or Firefox, I found that my browser kept crashing only when trying to navigate around the site.
The one feature that I found that I did like was the ability to use my Amazon Associates ID with my space to earn money for purchases that come from my lists, however when updating my book list I constantly received the following error messages “There was an error while deleting your book. Please try again later and Due to the high volume of activity on Spaces right now, your book may not have been saved. To avoid duplicate books, please check to see if your book was saved before trying again.” After several attempts it did finally work.
Some of the advantages to Window Live Spaces that I also thought were a bonus are
The ability to choose from over 100 themes
Easy upload of photos
Permission control: I was able to specify who could see and link to my space. According to Microsoft, “users under 18 are defaulted to Windows Live Messenger Only permission settings for their own safety.”
It also includes Statistics and another bonus is you can target the audience that you want to reach.
Lists. Update your blogroll easily by quick edit of the list feature.
The blog also comes with categories, which help you organize your blog entries, trackbacks that you can control by allowing trackbacks from any public website or trackbacks from other Windows Live Spaces or there is the option to disable them. Your blog also comes with the option to notify ping services each time you update.
You can also turn email publishing on or off. Windows live space allows you to publish blog entries and photos to your space from your computer or mobile device.
There are numerous other tools, which come with Window Live Spaces. I’ve only listed a few that I especially liked.
Anyone who knows me and is a regular visitor to my blog knows that I’m not a huge fan of Social networking sites, but I think that Window Live Spaces stands out from the rest of the social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster.
Though I was disappointed with the word filter, and the freezing of my browser, overall I am quite satisfied and impressed with Windows Live Spaces.
Great job guys.
Rose DesRochers
Technorati Tags: Windows Live Spaces, social networking, blogging, Microsoft, Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Amazon, trackbacks, ping, email publishing
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5 responses so far ↓
Wrote: Sep 2, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Well I have never tried it but sounds like it is a good thing you had some things you liked and some you didn’t but the ones you did outweighed the ones you didn’t:)
Steve
Wrote: Sep 2, 2006 at 10:51 pm
Yes, Microsoft has done a lot of the hard yards for you with Windows Live Spaces. However, is it really a blogging platform or a MySpace competitor? Microsoft seems to think it’s both, but I don’t think it’s ideal for bloggers.
Forgot to mention in my post on WLS censorship that it is the headline of the entry and not the body copy that is being parsed by the filter – good that you picked that up.
It’s not particularly hard to get around the filter; you can put in words like “pr0n” or “p_orn” or whatever, so you have to wonder why Microsoft bothers?
Oh well, at least it’s not as bad as with the Chinese MSN, where you can’t write “human rights” and “democracy”.
Wrote: Sep 2, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Like I’ve said, I’m not a fan of networking sites and for blogging, I prefer a blogging platform like Wordpress, however for those who enjoy networking sites ‘Windows Live Spaces’ has some great features. I think it will give MySpace a run for the money.
Wrote: Sep 5, 2006 at 10:14 am
Yeah, wordpress on a webhost is much better. But this is cute for someone without the experience and not confident enough to set out on their own. Never looked at myspace but knowing MS it’s bound to be similar, lol
Wrote: Sep 20, 2006 at 5:52 pm
It looks a tidy and efficient network….
But that kind of word censorship is just ridiculous. The whole point about using words to communicate is having the full range to draw on, even the apparently seamier side. Blocking bad language, while I think regrettable for the above reason, is understandable.
But blocking words that are only associated with questionable content…..no, no, NO. Invasive and patronising.
Thus endeth my ranting. *steam jets out of ears*.
(Note to self: need heat-sink for brain before ranting like this).
….
I use MySpace a lot (and it’s been helpful in networking for writing-industry contacts) and there aren’t any such filters, only guidelines. (There also isn’t a lot in the way of ‘blogging’, I’d argue).
As for my chosen blogging platform – Typepad is very nice indeed. And when you’ve outgrown its limitations, you can get MovableType and go it alone, from the ground up…….