Microsoft increases blogosphere presence

Microsoft has quietly released a beta desktop application, Windows Live Writer, to capitalise on growing consumer and business appetites for blogging.

The free download is available immediately, claiming to make it easier for bloggers to compose posts using Windows Live Spaces or non-Microsoft blog services such as Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad and WordPress.

Avoiding a corporate fanfare, the software giant instead used its Windows Live Writer team blog to announce the availability of the beta.

In June, Jupiter research released figures suggesting that corporate blogs were on the rise. It says that the current number of corporate blogs will almost double by the end of the year to touch 70 per cent of organisations.

Microsoft has clearly identified the potential in this market. Windows Live Spaces, the next generation of its blogging service MSN Spaces, was launched just last month, with bold claims of greater personalisation and safer social networking.

"Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium," said JJ Allaire from the Windows Live Writer team in the application's blog.

"Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone...We want Writer to work well with every blogging service out there. If you can't get Writer to work with your blog, we want to know."

The new application is feature-rich, according to Microsoft. Functionality includes WYSIWYG authoring so that the blog format doesn't get distorted between editing and publishing.

Windows Live Writer will also include photo and map publishing and a software development kit (SDK) so that bloggers can complement their posts with additional types of content.

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