New MSN Spaces Includes Ads, Improved Search and Better URLs

Posted on January 30, 2006

Microsoft has upgraded the MSN Spaces blogging and social networking service with new features including an upgraded search engine that is supposed to slowly improve over the next several days. The MSN Spaces URLs have also been improved so they are listed as spaces.msn.com/membername instead of the longer cumbersome URLs of the past. The move follows recent URL clean-ups at MySpaces and Friendster. A NetworkWorld article explains the new advertising tools from Amazon and Kanoodle.

Meanwhile, MSN Spaces users now can earn money from their blogs by becoming Amazon.com associates, and also by running ads distributed by Kanoodle.com.
In the case of Amazon.com, users would choose which books to feature on their blog's book list section. They would get paid anytime one of their blog visitors clicks on one of the featured books and purchases it from Amazon.com, according to another posting on Thursday on the official MSN Spaces blog. This program is available to bloggers in the United States, U.K., Canada, Germany, France and Japan.
For the Kanoodle.com program, MSN Spaces users need to sign up to have the ads displayed on their blogs. The ads will be contextually related to the blog's content, and MSN Spaces users will get paid every time a visitor clicks on an ad, Kanoodle.com announced Monday. This program is available to MSN Spaces users in the United States and Canada and only if their blogs are in English, according to the MSN Spaces team official blog.

There is also a post about the new features on the Spacecraft blog which says you can also integrate your Xbox Gamercard.

In love with your brand new Xbox 360! Of course you are. Well now you can show that love by adding your Xbox Recent Games Played and your Xbox Gamercard to your MSN Space. There are even five new themes all about Xbox.

Torres Talking and LiveSide also have more details about the new features.