MSN Spaces to be translated to Hebrew
Microsoft's blog site to be converted in coming year; Google's Blogger also expected to be translated. Both services set to threaten Israblog's dominance, provide bloggers with additional options
The service, which enables every surfer to develop and design a webblog in a few simple steps, is already available to Israeli surfers, but has not been adapted to the Hebrew language, while the interface is provides in English and in 16 additional languages.
MSN Spaces is the world's leading blog site with more than 100,000,000 unique users per month, according to data provides by comScore. The service is also expected to be upgraded and join Microsoft's Live series later in the year.
Also a blogger?
Upon Google's introduction to the Israeli audience, the company stated at the beginning of the year that it plans to translate as many services as possible into Hebrew within 18 months.
Google's blog service, Blogger, is now translated into 10 languages. It may be assumed that Blogger and the Adsense content-targeted advertising program will also be translated into Hebrew in the coming months. The advertising program is now combined into Blogger's English version and enables surfers to start a free blog and earn money for it through word ads automatically placed on the blog.
At the moment, a Hebrew blog can be started on the Blogger service, but the users only receive an English interface and have to adapt the design patterns into Hebrew themselves. In addition, the advertising service has yet to offer official support for the Hebrew content.
Competition for Tapuz, Israblog
The introduction of two global giants like Microsoft and Google into the Israeli blog domain is expected to pose a serious competition to Israel's leading blog sties Israblog (which operates in cooperation with NetVision), and Tapuz's blog site. Each of these websites has tens of thousands of active registered blogs.
Israblog provides a large variety of options for bloggers, but most of the particularly convenient options are still offered for NIS 100 a year. Tapuz offers all the advances options to everyone for free, in return for placing banners, and soon textual ads, in the blogs.
Tapuz announced this week that it would hand out its profits from the advertisements to the surfers within three months. The move was aimed at drawing new bloggers and keeping the existing ones, although the company denies any connection between the move and the introduction of new elements into the blog domain.
The increasing competition may also harm smaller blog sites based on independent systems, such as Corky.Net, Blogim and Bit.
