Recently I saw a post by Ed Oswald entitled Has Spaces Changed the Way You Blog? where he wrote

In the coming weeks I will be writing a commentary on the success of MSN Spaces for BetaNews.. I have made it no secret through several of my posts as well as comments to my friends that I truly think MSN has really struck gold with Spaces, and could change the way people think about blogs. Blogging before Spaces was more unidirectional -- where the author posted to an group which he likely did not know -- and were usually somewhat impersonal. However, with Spaces it's more omnidirectional -- yes, these can be your old fashioned blog -- however, through integration with MSN Messenger and the like, Spaces becomes an extension of your online self. You match it to your interests -- and people can learn more about you than a simple blog can provide. What music interests you -- photos of your recent trip to Australia -- and what not. Plus -- when you have something to say, all your friends will known in seconds with the "gleam".

Many people [especially in the mainstream media] view blogging as amateur punditry. However the truth is that for most people blogging and related activities are about communicating their thoughts and sharing their experiences with others [mainly friends and family]. This is a key aspect of the vision behind MSN Spaces. We aren't the first service provider to design a blogging service based on this premise, LiveJournal would be one of the best examples of this, but I believe have done one of the best jobs so far in truly focusing on building a platform for sharing experiences with friends, family & strangers.

At ETech, I am supposed to demo how the integration of MSN Messenger, MSN Spaces and Hotmail improves the ability of our users to communicate with their friends and family than in isolation. It is clear that this provides enormous value to our users as evidenced by posts such as Ed's, I just hope that I end up presenting this in a way that clearly shows why what we've built is so cool.