Mike Torres, one of the Program Managers for MSN Spaces, just emailed me to let me know that my blog was #2 on Google for "MSN Spaces". Reading that note I went "Cool! What ? WTF ?". It just so happens that the blog Mike was referring to is this blog, which I opened to test the service and  provide some feedback on. It therefore is supposed to have zero juice (or close to).

Investigating a bit, I did link to it a couple of times, my friend Mary Hodder also linked to it (mistakenly I guess), which did increase its juice. But being above Boing Boing, Scoble, Dare Obasanjo,... Duh ? I am not even the first "clavier" on Google (yet, but working on it ).

I then checked Bloglines and Technorati for the list of incoming links. The Technorati results showed a few bizarre results, that might hint at a potential reason: a handful of other MSN Spaces seemed to link to mine, with no obvious reason, and these links were all 92 days old. I then remembered that MSN Spaces includes by default a short linkroll of recently updated blogs. Which means that the Technorati crawler was going through these blogs as I updated my MSN Spaces 92 days ago (with this post), and my blog happened to be listed as "Last updated".

Could the same explanation apply to Google ? But instead of a handful of blogs, they would have picked up many (many many) more Spaces listing my blog in their linkroll ? Leading to this very strange (but quite amusing) situation. Since TypePad has the same (optional) feature of showing most recently updated blogs, has anyone seen a similar behavior ?

Any SEO guru reading this, and having a different explanation, please comment...

Since MSN Spaces' linkroll has gone "nofollow", I assume that this will disappear after the next Google dance. But who knows, I might get stuck there . This might be a new trick to game Google's index, but it is probabilistically very difficult to engineer (or is it not?).

Cross-post from Software Only.

Since I am going to spend a few days in Mother Land to participate to "Les Blogs", I am happy to announce that, in the now established tradition of Bloggers dinners, Marc Goldberg and yours truly will be hosting a dinner at l’Area (brazilian/lebanese fusion cuisine) on April 26 at 20:00 (that's 8PM :-). Expected topics: vc financing, blogging, photosharing (buzznet users most welcome :-), and frankly anything we'll all feel like talking about. Seating is unfortunately limited to 20, so please rsvp (by adding a comment on Marc's post) to lock in your participation. Address: L'Area, 10 r Tournelles 75004 PARIS (Metro: Bastille, Map) Cost of the dinner: 30 EUR We look forward to seeing you there! Image Marc and Jeff

This one is of Robert Scoble when he visited us.

Hmm, still no text in the caption of the picture.

Test of moblogging via email, to see where the picture ends up.

The picture got posted both as a blog entry, and in the photo sharing application. The only thing I am wondering is why the Title of the email is not used as a caption. Trying again with with another picture and some text in the body of the email.

Mike Torres points to a couple of interesting changes (in an email discussion):

1. Comment moderation issues are to be "fixed" soon (between now and Monday)
2. There is a hack to turn on HTML editing. Mike does point out that this might not be working 100%, or in the long run.

I just tested it, and yes it does work: I was able to include this Buzznet-hosted photo. The javascript syndication did not work (I suppose that the <script> tag is stripped out), so I had to do the inclusion by hand, but it did work.

Here is the hack, from Scott's blog (which is a must read to get some tips about MSN Spaces): add this: Edit! button to your Links in IE. Clicking on it when editing a post will force the editor to display a toggle "Use HTML to create your page". Getting better.

It is nice to see that the boys are quite responsive and communicate about issues.

Hummm... I was trying to leave a comment on Mike's post related to RSS syndication on MSN Spaces, and the software prevented me from publishing the comment, stating that my post was using prohibited language. I know that I have not yet mastered all the subtleties of English (and American) slang, but I am at a loss as to what is offending in the comment section (see the picture enclosed in this post - click on it to see a larger size).

Unless the system automatically detected that this was a feature request :-).

Update: I am having a lot of difficulties accessing my posts, or editing them. There seems to be quite a bit of DNS issues here. You guys should seriously consider following Amazon.com and switch to UltraDNS (one of my investments, as explained in this post).

I am sure that the Space guys will get plenty of feedback very quickly (that's the beauty of developing a blogging tool).

Tony has already posted a list of few good/bad features, that I add to:

• The lack of HTML editing is a problem b/c of the limitations of the WYSIWYG editor. Typepad has the same, but since you can fix the HMTL, at least there is a work around.
• The MSN centered nature of MSN Space is understandable, but I want to easily refer to books and music on Amazon, Photos on Buzznet, etc. Having to reload everything on MSN properties or linking by hand is cumbersome. The Music widget limiting to a Media Player playlist, or a list of songs is particularly annoying.
• There are a few issues with the Profile widget, especially after adding a picture that does not get resized or cropped.
• The blogroll has to be created by hand (unless I have not found the automatic way). I have tried to drag and drop a link onto the gadget on the home page, or on the edit page. Nada - besides being able to drop a URL in the URL field.
• It does not seem to be possible to alter the order to items placed in a list.
• Even though I deleted it, a "My Blog Photos" album keeps on reappearing. I'll use it as a default. Also, the fact that the photo caption is only available in the photo viewer is a bit surprising. I would have at least displayed it as a floating label when the mouse is on the photo.
• The overall lack of HTML support in the list, profile,... is irritating. I appreciate that this must be to keep tight control on what is done by users, but it might be useful to offer a switch (Beginner/Expert so of thing) where "Expert" can add HTML statements (even limited ones) in visual elements.
• Maybe it is me or my template, but I can't see a visual representation of hyperlinks in the text of my posts. You should make sure that chosen color combinations don't create that effect.

Not bad for an "out of the oven" product (especially from Microsoft :-). I'll be interested to know how they will try to position themselves on the tools market: as the easy to use journal for their community, or as a player in the "real" blogging tools market.

I'll keep on using it for Jeff's Space, just to check how quickly new features get released (and a few bugs get fixed).

Hi, Jeff Clavier here. It's been a while that I had been feeling that I needed a second blog, a personal one that is, where I could write about more personal matters, and topics that would not be relevant to the themes of my main blog: Software Only.

And since Microsoft has just launched MSN Space, I thought that I would give it a try.

As a means of introduction, Software Only covers most of the issues relevant to my Venture Consulting practice: venture capital, early stage financing, Web 2.0 and open source companies, consumer Internet startups - with a focus on blogging, search and social media at large.

Enjoy!