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Reactions to MSN Filter

Posted By Darren Rowse 8th of August 2005 Pro Blogging News 0 Comments

There has been a bit of a buzz around the blogging community in the past few days with the release of Microsofts blog publishing network – MSN Filter – a network of blogs looking to give the inside scoop on music, sport, TV, style and technology. MSN describe it as:

‘our team of bloggers will filter the best stories, photographs, links and other interesting tidbits that you’ve sent in, as well as items that they’ve dug up.

This is an opportunity to share your insider knowledge with the Filter community and take a chunk out of your 15 minutes of Internet fame.’

It’s reader driven content edited by nameless bloggers.

The response to MSN filter has been varied ranging from the bored (rafat at Paid Content writes ‘my reaction: ho hum’) to the ‘thrilled’ reaction of Jason Calacanis:

‘Now, I’m thrilled MSN is in the game because at some point soon I’m sure they will make these Filter sites and/or Start.com the default homepage for tens of millions of MSN/IE users. Tens of millions of folks will reach our blogs via Microsoft’s RSS reader and meta-blogs. The alternative—which we are living with right now—is our blogs are no where to be found on the MSN, Yahoo, Google or AOL home pages. Having these big players move blogs to the top level will be huge for blogging.’

Another blogger writing on the topic is Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web who bounces off Jason’s post wondering who will be the first out of Google, MSN, Yahoo and AOL to put blogs on their front page:

‘My money’s on Yahoo and AOL. Indeed I have hopes that both of them will fulfil my dreams of getting paid for my writing, by opening up and inviting truly independent content creators into their fold.’

My reaction to MSN Filters is that it’s a logical move that corresponds with Yahoo! getting into Health Blogs. I’m still not sure what I think about search engines having their own content sites are but know that its bound to happen whether it’s ‘right’ or not.

My initial reaction to MSN Filter is that i’s pretty bland and boring – without too much personality. I think not naming the bloggers is a bad move. From my own experience I know that my most successful blogs are generally ones where I’ve identified myself or at least injected some of my own personality into them. I guess MSN are wanting to concentrate more upon the content than the profile of their bloggers – the name ‘Filters’ I guess gives some indication of this.

My hope is that rather than trying to dominate the blogging community that MSN (and the others who will no doubt follow) will interact with it. True blogging is generous with it’s linking and builds relationships – hopefully we’ll see this continued with the big guns interacting in the medium as publishers.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I can see the hope of Jason that Microsoft may make the pages highly visible to Windows users, but I’m surely not going to sell out to Microsoft in order to get my work published!

    I’d rather take my chances elsewhere.

  2. New Feed Suggestion – MSN Filter

    MSN have a launched a new service MSN Filter
    which is basically a collection of blogs run by MSN that link to the
    the latest music, sports, TV and tech news found by their team of
    bloggers.  Sounds suspiciously like Weblogs but still probably

  3. I can’t see this as being anything other than a move to push other MSN services that are available (Search, hotmail etc) – You need a passport login to be able to post comments etc.

    I’d love to believe that its being done for the good of the blogging community as a whole, but a depersonalised summary of whats going on on the web isn’t going to cut it, especially with the nature of blogs being what they are (generally an independent voice for the masses, not a corporate soapbox),

    I’ll keep an eye on it, but I’m yet to be convinced.

  4. Isn’t this just one more attempt for the Rupert Murdoch’s in the world to grabs the reins of even more world media? Local television stations, local newspapers, and now.. blogs and podcasting?

  5. Looks like we’ve got company.

    All the more reasons your blogs need ” original ” content and not just snippets of someone else’s info.

    Learn your “opinion” now, because MSN will be able to do what a lot of ” bloggers ” do now, which is regurgitate.

    And with their resources, you can’t possibly keep up with their speed in ” snippetizing ” your niche.

    One more reason you need to set yourself up as the expert in your niche, with original, thought provoking, expert, educational comments.

    If you’re not able to do this, you’re not long for this world. Or you’ll just be talking to yourself.

  6. Since these blogs iIve been launched, I must admit that I still don’t exactly know what to think of them. While the initiative in itself could be interesting and open more of the internet public to the conceot of blog, I’m also afraid that such content would give this same public the wrong idea. I don’t know… it’s impersonal (those who write in, well, we don’t even know their nicknames!), and it doesn’t seem like much research/detail is brought to this (from what I’ve read of the filter blogs so far, which isn’t *all* of them, of course).

    It feels like a new sea to drown into, brought by the decision to surf the “hey, looks like it’s gonna be successful, let’s do it too on our own, vast scale and overwhelm ’em all” wave.

  7. I like how there’s no link back to the Filters page once you click on a topic. I really like how MSN Spaces ripped off the Ubuntu Linux logo.

  8. I am still rather confused by the MSN move (http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2005/08/05/microsoft-enters-the-blogosphere/)

    If it is “reader driven” why not aggregate readers blogs?

  9. MSN Filter – where do you stand?

    Where do you stand on the MSN Filter debate? Pro or con? Here are some thoughts on what people think of MSN Filter. For those who don’t know, MSN Filter is a new network of blogs MSN has released…

  10. […] son Calacanis – Microsoft Monitor – Neowin – C|NET – Red Herring – Dave Winer – Om Malik – Darren Rowse – Mark Jen – Mike Torres 1 & 2

    Posted: 8/10/200 […]

  11. […] Jason Calcanis, Paid Content, Richard MacManus, MyMarkup, Dave Winer, Om Malik, Microsoft Watch, Plaxoed!, Robert Scoble, Steven Hartwright, Steve Rubel, John Walkenbach, Paul Scrivens, ProBlogger, Technoogle, Guillaume’s Tech Blog Tags: msnfilter, filter, blogs, blogging, gawker, weblogsinc., microsoft, techcrunch, web2.0, RSS Categories: Company & Product Profiles | Bookmark this post with del.icio.us […]

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