Microsoft culls Windows Live Spaces for WordPress.com – acquisition possible?

September 28, 2010

Windows Live Spaces is the past. WordPress is the future. At least according to Microsoft. Which strikes me as rather strange.

Microsoft has decided to close its Windows Live Spaces blogging platform, instead urging users of the service to transfer their blogs over to WordPress.com. Does this mean we should expect Microsoft to acquire Automattic, the company responsible for WordPress? Or is this instead Microsoft realizing it cannot compete in every single sector, especially on the Web, and therefore scaling back some of its less-successful efforts?

Windows Live Spaces launched in 2004 (as MSN Spaces), and it has served Microsoft well as its free blogging/social networking platform ever since. There are a reported 30 million people actively using Windows Live Spaces at the present time, which is a fairly sizable number.

However, Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to shutter Windows Live Spaces in exactly six months time. Windows Live Spaces users are being strongly urged to port their existing blogs over to WordPress.com thanks to a new “partnering together” which will see those users effectively receive an “upgrade” in terms of the quality and features of their blogging platform.

In effect, this is Microsoft admitting defeat; it knows Windows Live Spaces isn’t as good as WordPress, and instead of throwing money and resources at maintaining and upgrading the service it’s letting WordPress have its users. Which isn’t very Microsoft.

There is the possibility that Microsoft is going to acquire Automattic, with ConceivablyTech looking at the whys and wherefores. The biggest pull for Microsoft would surely be owning a blogging platform with more users than Google’s Blogger.

The other possibility, and certainly the one Microsoft is sticking to for the time being, is that Microsoft is realizing the pointlessness of some of its services when there is a bigger, better alternative already out there. If so then this marks a definite shifting of tactics at Redmond, as Ars Technica details.