Microsoft has released Live Spaces, a social network with blog hosting and photo sharing.
The new service replaces its existing offering, MSN Spaces.

Live Spaces combines social networking features with blogging and photo sharing.

Social networking features integrate with Microsoft's Live Messenger instant messenger (IM) service and users can initiate IM conversations from within Live Spaces.

Live Spaces includes privacy controls, so that users can restrict who can contact them, view their profile or the content of their pages.

By default, pages belonging to users under 18 will only be made available to people on their contact list.

Social networking site MySpace has been criticised in the past for failing to protect minors from paedophiles.

Users can also customise their pages with gadgets – mini-applications that provide up-to-date information. Hundreds of gadgets – offering information from traffic updates to stock quotes – are available from the Live Gallery.

"Windows Live and internet-based ad-funded software and service are critical to driving growth for the company," said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft.