Despite all the broohaha over whether Spaces is the biggest blog service on the planet, it's apparent that Windows Live is making an impact on the Web. After being around for less than a year, Alexa now ranks Live.com (and all its sub-domains) as the 10th biggest property on the Web. And yet it doesn't seem to be affecting MSN.com's traffic that much. MSN is still the 2nd ranked property on the Web, behind Yahoo.com and ahead of Google.

Here is the relative ranking for the live.com sub-domains:

- login.live.com 59%
- mail.live.com 20%
- spaces.live.com 15%
- get.live.com 2%
- live.com 1%
- ideas.live.com 1%
- help.live.com 1%
- Other websites 1%

The login.live.com domain is essentially Microsoft Passport - and note that when you sign into certain MSN properties, it'll re-direct through the login.live.com domain. That goes some way to explain why live.com is doing so well, but not at the expense of msn.com.

Here is the Alexa comparison chart between MSN and Live.com:

The gap is closing, but more due to Live.com's growth rather than MSN losing traffic. However as George Moore, GM for the Windows Live Developer Platform, told me earlier this week - Windows Live rollout is due for completion at the end of this year:

"Well actually you're starting to see a number of the websites losing the beta designation and the trend looks alright. I can't say the specific date when everything's going to be out of beta, but certainly it's going to be this year - ahead of Vista."

So Live.com is well and truly on track to become Microsoft's main Web property. While MSN isn't losing much ground currently, once all the current Live products go out of beta and replace the MSN versions (e.g. Live Mail for Hotmail) - expect Windows Live to take MSN's place at number 2.