TDavid has a post critical of MSN Spaces where he writes  I think it's about time for another MSN Spaces update.

I'm starting to lose interest in MSN Spaces as a blogging tool.

Some of the future features that have been hinted at like the ability to host a spaces at our own domain like blogger does need to come to fruition to revitalize my interest in this service. I purchased a domain for this very purpose months ago and they sit, collectin dust.

Not just me though, I don't hear many others talking about MSN Spaces any more either. I know the target audience isn't regular bloggers, but just people who want to have a journal, but if Microsoft really wants MSN Spaces to compete with blogger then they need to add the ability to run off their own domain and open up the template customization a lot more.

Otherwise this will become -- maybe it already is -- just a glorified diary for sharing notes, pictures and music playlists with family and friends.

I'll let Mike talk about upcoming features, site updates and the like. There is one thing, I would like to address though. If people view MSN Spaces as a place for people to share their words, music and images with their friends and family then it would be fulfilling our goals for the site and I'd view it as an unbridled success. In my post entitled Why MSN Spaces and not MSN Blogs? I wrote

As to why they are called "spaces" as opposed to "blogs" it is because we believe there is more to sharing one's experiences online than your online journal. People want to share their thoughts, their favorite music, their favorite books, pictures of their loved ones and so on. It isn't just  posting your thoughts and experiences in the reverse chronological order which is what typically defines a "weblog". It's supposed to be a person's personal space online which was the original vision of personal publishing on the Web which spawned the personal homepage revolution a couple of years ago. Weblogs are the next iteration of that vision and we expect MSN Spaces to be the refinement of that iteration.

MSN Spaces is designed to allow people to create textual and visual diaries of their lives to share with others. We aren't the only one's that believe this as is evidenced by competing services such as Yahoo! 360° which has borrowed a leaf or two from our book. I'm curious as to what other goals a weblogging service could have?