Microsoft employee blogs go Russian

The recent Moscow visit by Microsoft founder Bill Gates sealed the launch of a single platform for Russian-speaking Microsoft bloggers. Site administrators only prohibit the posting of anonymous comments and stress that the opinions expressed "reflect personal views and not necessarily those of the employer." The service's functionality is in line with the latest advances in blogging, such as the possibility to search across blogs, sign up for comments, export RSS feeds, perform tag searches, and suchlike. The project has been conceived as a universal platform for experience sharing among IT pros, and all blog postings display a strong corporate spirit. This favorably distinguishes the Russian-language Microsoft blogs from the Google Russia blog that features no commentaries, which makes all postings sound like advertising press releases.