Microsoft drops Live Spaces, radically alters culture

The headline story is that MSFT discontinued its blogging platform Live Spaces. And really, that’s no big deal. Started as a competitor to Blogger and Live Journal, Spaces never really caught on, since anything you made there was heavily branded with Microsoft or MSN and it’s hard to make something feel uniquely yours with the 800 pound gorilla sitting on every page. So it bombed. Stuff does.

But what’s really intriguing, as Ars Technica points out, is that users of Live Spaces are now directed to WordPress, which has taken over the operation. Obviously, WordPress is much better at running blogs than Microsoft is but as Ars Technica points out, this is a break from Not Invented Here syndrome. That’s a condition that MSFT has long had that other companies just aren’t as good so a Microsoft version should always be made. So it’s a sign of humility, sure, that’s great, but it also may signal a new era of collaboration from Redmond. Which could be really cool and help them out as they fade a bit in the zeitgeist.