MSN blogs sift through popular culture

Microsoft has quietly launched MSN Filter, expanding its presence in the growing sea of blogs that have washed onto the Internet.

MSN Filter, which launched last week, features blogs that cover five categories: music, sports, TV, technology and lifestyle.

MSN Filter enlarges Microsoft's presence in the blogging arena, which has rapidly risen in popularity and captured the attention of competitors Yahoo, Google and America Online.

Each of the MSN Filter categories is hosted by a moderator who writes the posts, but unlike other blogs found on the Internet, these moderators' names and identities are not prominently displayed.

However, the MSN Filter moderators do include a brief snippet about themselves, with one moderator joking that her posts are not generated by artificial intelligence.

MSN Filter expands Microsoft's blogging efforts, which include MSN Spaces. On that site, which launched in December, individuals can publish their own blogs.

Meanwhile, Google and Yahoo are providing tools to give bloggers the means to capture some ad revenue.