I've been surprised to see several weblogs report that MSN Spaces 27 million blogs with over 7.6 million active bloggers. What I found surprising wasn't the inaccurate data on the number of weblogs or active users that we have. The surprise that these accurate sounding numbers were 'interpreted' from an off hand comment I made in my blog. The source of this information seems to be this post in the Blog Herald entitled MSN Spaces now has 27 million blogs and over 7.6 million active users: Microsoft which states

Microsoft’s blogging service has grown from an estimaited 18 million blogs in October to 27 million blogs and at least 7.6 million active bloggers, according to Dare Obasanjo from Microsoft in a post discussing server issues.

The service still remains in third position amongst blog providers, with Xanga and MySpace both believed to be hosting 40 million blogs each.

(note: calculations based on this line: "I never expected [Spaces] that we'd grow to be three times as big [as Live Journal] and three times as active within a year.")

I've been pretty surprised at the number of blogs I've seen quoting these numbers as facts when they are based on such fuzzy techniques. For the record we don't have 27 million blogs, the number is higher. As for our number of active users, that depends on your definition of active. Using one definition, we are over three times as active as LiveJournal. That's what I meant. 


 

Tuesday, 13 December 2005 18:48:44 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dare,

OK, you really just begged for a couple of questions! What is your definition of an active blogger? Just to establish the scale, what is your definition of a lazy blogger?

You are welcome to my definitions, but I think yours are more authoritative ;-)

Thanks for a great blog!
Wednesday, 14 December 2005 06:54:27 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Wow, I don't think I've ever even visited *one* MSN Spaces blog! Where are all of them?
pwb
Thursday, 15 December 2005 07:46:58 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dave
I've requested actually figures from Microsoft before and never had a response so to be fair guessing numbers is the best that can be done. In my last Blog Herald blog count I had Spaces at 18 million based on figures MSN Europe had given to various outlets and previously released figures elsewhere. That you've got more that 27 million is both amazing and exciting and if you'd love to share the actual figure, and even do an interview I'd love to do it. Far too many people in the blogosphere write Spaces off but I noticed probably 6-9 months ago that the figures were exploding and despite not getting headlines as many of your competitors where that you guys were serious players in the blogosphere. I'm happy to give you a platform to spread the good word about Spaces. Jeez....if you tell me its 40m + you'll even beat Xoom and Myspace, now that would be something.
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