Microsoft blogging and social networking service, Windows Live Spaces, was beset with technical problems immediately following its launch on Tuesday.

According to the official web-log of Gregg Phipps, a programmer for Spaces, the first 12 hours after launch were plagued with performance problems and technical problems. Pages loaded slowly, e-mail services malfunctioned, and emoticons from previous Spaces versions not working.

We know we disappointed a bunch of you with the issues we had in our rollout last night, Phipps wrote. We planned long and hard for this release and unfortunately, it was one of those 'gotchas' that only showed up once we were in production.

The new Windows Live Spaces was released on Aug. 1, in an effort to consolidate the Windows Live brand that also includes email and instant messaging services, both currently in beta.

Users can personalize their pages using a host of tools provided by Microsoft, including games, news feeds, and other 'live' data. As of May, online media and market researcher Nielsen//NetRatings reported over 7 unique visitors to the site, representing nearly 300 percent growth from the previous year.

Microsoft