MSN quietly launched last week a preview version of MSN Filter, a cross between a blog and a wiki.

MSN made the move a month after MSN officials made it public that they were looking to hire five "freelance contributing editors" to create blogs in the areas of television, music, technology, sports, and fashion/food/style.

MSN Filter updates can be accessed via desktop, email, or phone, and will also be integrated into MSN's Start.com platform.

Adam Sheppard, lead product manager for MSN Filter, said MSN's model " is essentially Nanopublishing as originally championed by Nick Denton at Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc. Both are great blog networks with their own audiences that they'll continue to be successful with."

Lead Program Manager at MSN Spaces, Mike Torres, describes MSN Filter as "a collection of community-driven blogs" built on the MSN Spaces platform.

(MSN Spaces is Microsoft's blogging service, introduced in April.)

With MSN Filter, Torres said, "expect 5-10 high quality entries per day on topics near and dear to your heart — you can even submit content, links, photos and multimedia to the bloggers on topics you're passionate about… That's why we chose the name 'Filter', there's a ton of content on the web on every topic imaginable but you have to know where to look in order to find the hidden gems."

MSN Filter appears to be a cross between a traditional Web log, where writers have full editorial control, and a wiki model, embracing user contributions.

"Our vision is to have consumers be the primary contributors to the site strongly influencing the content of each of the categories. The MSN Filter bloggers do not have to secure approvals from Microsoft before posting their own blog entries in their own voice or those contributed by the community," said Adam Sohn, director of MSN public relations.

"The paid bloggers are area-experts, notable bloggers and journalists. In the initial stages of MSN Filter, we expect them to share their expertise, thoughts and content. As the MSN Filter community grows we expect their role to shift to being mainly aggregators of people's contributed content," Sohn added.

With generic contact addresses for each site, it does not look like MSN intends to reveal the identities of the bloggers any time soon. Only on the Television Filter, where a "Kim" and "Raoul" alternately post entries, are the writers even mentioned by name at all.

Blogger Clyde Smith at ProHipHop.com said he considered the anonymous blogging play "a bad strategy for Microsoft though it kind of fits their corporate personality.

"Blogging is about personal voice," Smith continued. "Launching an official blog without identifying the writers basically reduces it to a content management system and feeds into Microsoft's 'you will be assimilated into the cyborgsphere' public image."

Other responses around the Web were more upbeat.

Roger Dooley, of "Rogerd's Notebook" fame, blogged:

"We've been saying for years that businesses need to eliminate the barriers that separate them from their consumers, and that online communities are one powerful way to do that. It remains to be seen how much of an impact these topical blogs will have, and whether vibrant communities will develop around them. Still, it's a step in the right direction for a company that is simultaneously trying to shed the 'evil empire' label and gain mindshare in consumer entertainment markets."