At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Microsoft’s Dharmesh Mehta just announced that Windows Live Spaces is going to be shut down. In its place, Microsoft and Automattic have partnered to migrate some 30 million active bloggers on Spaces to WordPress.com.
We posted a while ago about the precarious nature of Spaces, and while we’re kind of sad to see it go, partnering with WordPress seems to be about the best possible outcome. Users will have some time to decide, but will be able to begin moving their blogs to WordPress starting today:
The Spaces migration to WordPress.com will be automated and easy, ensuring the movement of blog content, integrated media, comments and links is simple. 8.5% of all web sites on the internet are now powered by WordPress, which represents over 26 million publishers who use WordPress to power their blogs and web sites. About half of those sites – 13 million – are hosted by us on WordPress where they attract one of the largest audiences on the internet: of over a quarter billion people every month.
Spaces will however be shut down, next March, so if you have a Spaces blog that you want to keep, you’ll need to move it over before then. You will also be given the option to download your Spaces content, in html form, or simply to delete your Space.
You can read more about Spaces and WordPress on Inside Windows Live, or on TechCrunch. We’ll have more soon, including some WordPress news of our own, stay tuned!