Microsoft Corp., world’s largest software maker, has entered the blog market with its new MSN Spaces beta service that it started offering to end-users starting Thursday.

This is Microsoft’s way of targeting Google’s Blogger and other similar blogging services such as Xanga to dominate this segment as well.

MSN Spaces allows you to publish content such as pictures and music lists. Uniquely, users can set different access levels for different levels with separate background and designs for each page. Also, users can update their blog via e-mail and cell phones, which is expected to make blogs even popular than they are today.

The blog also integrates MSN Messenger and Hotmail services directly to the blog, in return promoting Microsoft based services.

"Spaces is like a scrap-booking service to share whatever you want to share with people," said Brooke Richardson, Lead Product Manager, MSN, Communications Services.

Thus far, Microsoft has not announced the final date of its blogging service.