Microsoft is releasing a beta version of a blog platform call MSN Spaces. It's being released with the latest version of MSN Messenger and MSN Hotmail.

Though it's targeted for personal use, not business, the advantage is that it will bring blogging more and more to the forefront in terms of mindshare. Because it's packaged with Messenger and Hotmail, millions more could begin using blogs. Microsoft certainly has the clout to be able to educate consumers as to the use of blogs.

There is a tacet danger inherent in this. Due to its emphasis on personal use, blogs may continue to be pigeon-holed as nothing more than "personal online journals or diaries," and not as serious tools for business use. 

It looks as if Robert Scoble (along with Shel Israel) are challenging themselves to write a book on business blogs. Presumably, it will be entitled The Red Couch.

Of course, the de facto BEST BUSINESS BLOG BOOK OF ALL TIME is Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies being written by Susannah Gardner (she let's me call her Susie). I'm the technical editor for it so, heck yea, I'm prejudiced. By the way, it's available for pre-order right now on Amazon.com.

Because I've heard mixed reviews about people trying to market their services on Ebay, the only reason this story interests me is that this particular service provider is a blogger.

Ensight.org blogger Jeremy Wright is offering his blog writing and consultancy services on Ebay and the bid, according to CBS MarketWatch's Frank Barnako, was up to $1500, with about a half-dozen bids.

Barnako does a great interview with him, well worth reading.

It seems to me his modus operandi here is to widen the doors for blogging just a bit...

I'd like to think I'm setting an example of what's possible for bloggers. Public relations was a nascent industry at one point; now it's a $4.7 billion industry. I'm not sure blogging will ever get that big, but it is certainly good for companies to be aware of the possibilities. As well as for bloggers to realize they're not "selling out" when they get paid to write.

This event is telling that blogs are still outside the mainstream in terms of use as business communications tools when an accomplished blogger like Jeremy has to go on Ebay in order to generate enough buzz to bring attention to the medium.

Jeremy is a business blogging evangelist par excellance, and it sounds like whatever he ends up making is less than he deserves.

BREAKING NEWS: Bob Bly has joined the Blogosphere!

I have an announcement to make. . .just got an email from Bob Bly saying that he has just today joined the blogosphere with a post about how direct marketers think.

That pummeling he took as a result of the DM News article, along with the all the encouragement he received following that, paid off.

Let me be the first (or one of the first anyway) to welcome him as a distinguished member of this astute community. Bob, we hope you won't regret it. Now, just sit back and watch your hit count rise. (We'll keep our fingers crossed your ROI does as well!)

I don't know if the Guinness Book of World Records has one for the number of comments for a first time blog post. If they do, Bob Bly's first post just shattered it! He has 50 and counting! (Even if half of them are a conversation between Bob and Nick Usborne! Ha, ha!)

I jumped in to be #50, but due to the way the site has it timestamped, it looks like I'm number #48. But, I swear to you the #49 and #50 posts that follow were already there. Anyway. . .sour grapes on my part.

One thing that has me mystified (Bob too, for that matter) is B.L. Ochman's comment about his blog being "an advertisement." Don't get me wrong, I think highly of B.L., (I mean, I have her blooming book listed in the r-h column. Buy it, would ya? I need the revenue.) but I think she is just plain wrong in making that assertion. I don't believe Bob, or anyone else for that matter, expected his first post to garner the kind of response that it did.

I know he is a savvy marketer, but I also don't think he wrote that DM News article putting the negative spin on blogging just to create a lot of buzz, while all the while surreptitiously planning to launch a blog himself. If he did, well kudos to him. That was a smart move.

This is beginning to sound like a Gawkeresque gossip blog, something I never intentioned it to be. (Though I can see a "Being John Malcovich" style movie being made from this. Here's the title: Bob Bly Blogs. Get the Cohen brothers to direct it.)

If nothing else, Bob has learned one quintessential lesson about the power of blogs. . .they are about engendering conversation. Viva la Blog!

I recently subscribed to the Blog News Alerts at Topix.net. I am ferreting through the dozens of blogging related headlines to find some to pass along to you. Here's the first installment in what may become a weekly list...

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