Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday launched out of beta Windows Live Spaces, the company's blogging service that replaces MSN Spaces.

Described as the "next-generation" of the older service, Live Spaces offers more social-networking features, including the ability to connect to people listed in the contact list of Microsoft's instant messaging and email services. At the same time, Spaces bloggers can decide who contacts them through the services, sees their profile information and views content of their sites.

Microsoft expects to ship out of beta by the end of the summer almost half of the 20 Live services its testing. Windows Live is the brand name for the company initiative to make its software available as Web services.

Among the unreleased services Microsoft expects to ship this year in beta is Windows Live QnA, a search engine that helps people find information on the Web by asking and answering questions from an online community on a given topic. People can sign up for the beta through a QnA site.