According to an eWeek article Microsoft will release its own blogging service in the near future.

Microsoft’s MSN division is expected to take the wraps off of its MSN Spaces blogging service this week, according to sources close to the company.

MSN is expected to tout MSN Spaces as a direct competitor to blog creation and hosting tools such as Blogger, Blog*Spot, LiveJournal and TypePad. Microsoft also will position MSN Spaces as a way to allow users to more easily share photo albums and music lists, insiders said.

Knowing how Microsoft works this was to be expected sooner rather than later, especially since blogs have received a lot of media attention these last few months and companies are starting to integrate them into their communication and marketing strategies. There is a lot of potential left in this technology and they are hoping to tap some of that.

The one point of the article that I foud interesting was the integration of the service with their own IM client – MSN Messenger 7. This was something that I was looking into a couple of weeks ago but more along the lines of integrating MovableType and Jabber. The idea has not made it past just being that. However, I will keep an eye on this topic, mostly to see how people will put to work this combination of very popular technologies.