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"Microsoft, in a rather surprising announcement said that they will be moving all Windows Live Spaces accounts to WordPress.com.\r\n\r\nWindows Live Spaces was the only Live service that did not undergo any updates in the latest refresh.\u00A0While intriguing, moving to Wordpress instead wasn\u2019t exactly on top of our minds.\r\n\r\nMicrosoft\u2019s online initiatives were always made fun of until lately. While Google has been figuring out social layers with projects like Buzz, Wave and Orkut, Microsoft decided to be a social aggregator for its Windows Live users.\r\n\r\nMicrosoft did not, thankfully, jump and say, \u201Chey social is cool, let\u2019s make another social network and micro-blogging service.\u201D Instead they enabled users to fetch in data from their various social networks and have them at one place. With Windows Live Messenger\u2019s Facebook integration, viewing photographs and videos is fun, Windows Live\u2019s list of supported networks is large. Social Connectors for Outlook 2010 is another example of Microsoft opening up to integrate with existing web services.\r\n\r\nMigrating millions of users to another service is a significant business decision for Microsoft. Rather than devoting sources to match Spaces with WordPress, they\u2019ve moved to WordPress. The keyword here is moved. Microsoft and Automattic presented WordPress on Azure roughly a year back and probably Microsoft realized that they didn\u2019t have to compete with WordPress when they could partner with them.\r\n\r\nCongratulations to Matt and to the engineers and decision makers who made this happen.\r\n\r\nPS: I moved my Spaces blog to WordPress and it was smooth other than the part where I had (re)think a URL.\r\n\r\nPS #2: Microsoft can indeed keep secrets!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2010/09/28/microsoft-embraces-web-services-while-schmidt-peels-social-layers/>