Microsoft may not have an official corporate policy on Web logging, or blogging. But that isn't stopping the Redmond software vendor from setting up hosted blog communities, left and right.

The latest Microsoft-sponsored blogging site is called "The Spoke." It is a project of Microsoft's academic developer group and seems to be targeted primarily at university students.

Check Out The Spoke Here

So far, The Spoke seems to be in an early public test phase. There are about a dozen registered community members, or "hubbers," participating in the message boards.

Within the past few days, Microsoft added a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed capability to the site.

Microsoft itself isn't hosting the site. According to the "About" page for The Spoke, Microsoft's entry is hosted by a company called Smooth Fusion of Lubbock, Texas. Smooth Fusion has worked with Microsoft's developer division before on collateral for the MSDN Academic Alliance.

The Spoke is "almost a competitor to LiveJournal, Blog*spot, etc.," said one individual evaluating participation, who asked for anonymity.

LiveJournal and Blog*spot are hosted personal-publishing tools.

One of the Academic Developer team members is Microsoft blogger Mario Jobbe. Jobbe posted an item about The Spoke on October 8:

"If you haven't already, make sure you check out theSpoke. It's a new online community for students into technology, and one of my main projects here at Microsoft. If you're interested in starting a blog, theSpoke is a great place to do it. There's currently a splash page up; the real site will go live in early November. Stay tuned for more information..."

One element of the Academic Developer Group's mission is to head off the popularity of Unix/Linux at the university pass. In June, Morris Sim, the head of the group, told Microsoft Watch that he was planning to use blogging as a tool for reaching out to students and building more of a sense of community around Microsoft technologies and products.

Sim said at that time that he expected to rely on the GotDotNet Student Web log back-end. It's unclear whether The Spoke will supersede that effort.

GotDotNet Student and the main GotDotNet community space represent just two of Microsoft's forays into blogging.

See GotDotNet Student Here

And the Main GotDotNet Community Site

Microsoft Research is developing social-networking software code-named "Wallop," the first fruits of which could show up in 2006 when the "Longhorn" version of Windows goes live. Wallop is designed to use blogs, wikkis, instant-messaging and e-mail to connect individuals in peer groups. Microsoft officials have said to expect an RSS aggregator to be part of the Longhorn user interface.

And the ASP.Net team at Microsoft has been dabbling with blogging, as well, via the Community Starter Kit distributed to individuals interested in building their own community sites.

Read More About Wallop

And the ASP.Net Community Starter Kit

A growing number of Microsoft employees also are authoring their own blogs, hosted via various providers.

Check Out Our Growing List of Microsoft Bloggers Here

(This is an edited version of an article which appeared in the December 1, 2003, issue of the Microsoft Watch newsletter.)