Microsoft drops their own blogging service, what does that mean for its Office integration?
Microsoft has announced that they are phasing out their ‘Windows Spaces’ blogging service in favor of WordPress.com
Strictly speaking Microsoft hasn’t made that announcement; it was a carefully worded blog post. In the usual ‘PR Speak’ approach they said that Microsoft and WordPress.com are ‘partnering’ together. It’s a strange partnership indeed when one of the couple gets killed off after the honeymoon. I hope my wife doesn’t hear about this new form of ‘partnership’, but I digress …
There are systems in place to migrate a Windows Spaces blog to WordPress. But there are flaws. Your Windows Live ID doesn’t work with WordPress (strange, you’d expect Microsoft would insist upon that important extension of their sign-in technology). Your preferred web link name/url might not be available on WordPress.com
For Office 2007 and Office 2010 users it means one of the integrated blogging should now be ignored.
In Word 2007 and Word 2010 there are blogging features which let you write in Word and post directly to a blog. No surprise that ‘Windows Live Spaces’ is the top of the list of supported blogs.
If you want to create a blog, don’t use the Windows Live option now because you’ll have to change (sorry ‘upgrade’) it in a few months.
It’s better to migrate sooner to make sure you get your preferred WordPress.com url before someone else gets it.
As you can see WordPress is already supported for blog posting in Word so once you’ve made the changeover you’ll be able to continue using Word as your blog editor.
