internet

Beginning as MSN Spaces when social networking began to take off, it has been recently revamped and renamed and comes as part of Windows Live so you may well have a Spaces page just waiting for you to start it up!

So, what can you do with it?  Well, there's space for a blog, some lists, photos and a guestbook which we always think is a pleasant addition to a site.  You can fill in your profile, checkout your friends, change the colour and placing of modules as well as the type of information displayed.

Thinking back a few years, it's what everyone wanted - their own page on the internet ready to do with as they wished. 

It takes only a few minutes to create a basic page and it is something you can dip into when the fancy takes you and add more content or update your blog.  And, since it's not a major blog site, you can treat it as your own little place to put down your thoughts.  Make sure, however, that you know who is allowed to read what you write and change it to private if that's what you want.

We think that the range of templates is good and the pages look attractive

We think that the range of templates is good and the pages look attractive and functional although not exactly artistic.  Some third party customisation is available but if you want your page to look really different then you may be out of luck.

As well as the above, you get access to your SkyDrive which gives you a useful 5GB of back up space.

So, what's wrong with Live Spaces?  We have always had a performance issue when accessing our own Space.  As with many Microsoft sites, Spaces is slow to use and on occasions so slow as to be almost unusable.

The other problem, we feel, is the sense of being hemmed in because the system does not allow much customisation or for the pages to look unique in the way that, say, MySpace does.  In addition, Live Spaces does not permit the same friend interaction as MySpace or Facebook and again you get the sense of being stuck within the system.

If social networking were distributed free then, we feel, this is the sort of network that would be created!  It's adequate, not bad looking but it lacks any sort of soul.  Having said that, however, it's free and it's a great place to start and learn about designing your own page.  But it may not be long before you want to move on to one of the other major players.

If you feel we have been overly-critical in this review or if you would like your Spaces page to be featured then please leave a comment below.

Tags: blogs, networking