Wilcox goes with MSN Spaces

Good to see that Joe Wilcox is using MSN Spaces for his personal blog. His take on Spaces is dead on, in my opinion. When Spaces debuted, lots of hard core bloggers dismissed it outright for lack of customization and control afforded by other solutions like MT, but as Joe points out, Spaces isn’t designed for them. It’s designed for the rest of the Web using world, the vast bulk of whom really, REALLY, don’t want to try and figure out how to set up a MySQL account or tweak PHP code just so they can write up their knitting project or share pictures of their niece’s kitty kat.

See, I like that geek stuff, which is why I’m off here blogging on my own site. But I completely agree in the beauty and simplicity of the MSN Spaces concept. Start with the basics that appeal to the mass of users, then allow for progessively more complex customization as they become more advanced.

I wish we would apply this to Office and Windows. Take Office – have the base install of Word or Outlook be very stripped down, clean, simple and easy as hell. Provide a nice, intuitive menu of plugins that come with your purchase price (like grammar check, mail merge, etc etc). Rip out all those buttons and menus that the vast bulk of users don’t understand and won’t ever use.Or with Messenger – tons of features and tabs and buttons, when most users just want to do simple messaging. Start with that, and have the rest be easy to plug in as users want.

Follow the Spaces example here. They are definitely on to something for a mass-market consumer product, and the rest of our product teams can learn from it.