The Windows Live Spaces Team has not only today released a ton of new feautues for Windows Live Spaces but has also supplled my pals over at LiveSide with some interesting stats. As of right now, the service is now available in 51 countries in 25 languages, there have been 93 million spaces created since Spaces was released, and more than 111 million people a month use Spaces. As well as this more 18 million photos are added per day and totaling over 4 billion since day 1. Anyhow here’s the list of improvments as got from the Windows Live Spaces Team Blog (The Space Craft)

Communication
There are brand new ways to communicate with your friends, as well as with new people that you’d like to meet.

• Your new Spaces home page
  Now when you log in, you’ll see a new page dedicated to keeping you up-to-date on changes to your space and what’s new with your Windows Live Messenger contacts.  In one glance you’ll see who has updated their space and who has added comments to your space.  Roll over their picture to see who’s updated their photos, who’s posted a blog entry, and who’s added new lists.

• Messaging
  Keep in touch with your Spaces friends and meet other people on Spaces by sending them messages. Just put your cursor over their profile picture and you’ll see a Send a message link.   You can also use the link in the Visitor tools module on a person’s space.

• Guestbook
  Add the guestbook module and people visiting your space can leave comments with rich formatting, including images and video. Add the guestbook to your space by clicking here.

Customization
There are many new customization options for Spaces, so you can better control how your space looks.

• Custom background image
  Now you can upload whatever picture you want from your computer and use it as the background of your space. Upload your image in the Customize menu under the Advanced tab.

• Additional colors and themes
  There are now more themes to choose from and an easy-to-use color picker. You can also change the fonts!

Gadgets and Modules
With the changes we’ve made to gadgets and modules, now you can customize them to create the layout and design you want for your space.

• Size and style
  Most gadgets and modules can span the full width of a column, and you can now remove their borders or change their titles to whatever you want by clicking on the arrow in the right hand corner of the gadget or module when you are in Edit mode.

• Other cool stuff
  You can have multiple modules at the top or bottom of your space that span all of the columns perfect for your space title and tagline. You can also have more than one version of the same gadget on your space. And if you’re on someone else’s space and see a module you like, you can add it to your space by clicking the + sign in the upper-right corner of the module.

Check out and install some spaces gadgets today from the Windows Live Gallery.

Photos
With over 18 million photos uploaded by Spaces users every day, we know that improving the experience of managing photos is important to you, so we added a few new features. 

• Managing your photos
  There’s a brand new page for viewing and editing albums on your space.

• Viewing photos
  There’s a new layout for the individual photo pages so it’s faster and easier to view your photos and see all of your comments at a glance.

Mobile
There’s been a dramatic increase in Spaces mobile usage over the past few months, and we wanted to provide great mobile interaction with Spaces. Here’s what’s new:

• See at a glance the recent updates and comments on your space
• Add, delete, view, and browse your friends
• View profile information

Interested in learning more about mobile features for Spaces? Read this Space Craft blog entry

Lists
Lists are now easier to use and they look even better.

• Music lists
  Now you can show specific music lists on your spaces home page as well as see multiple results when searching for music on Amazon to create your list.

• Book lists
  Same as with music! Search for the book and add the information and picture from Amazon.com to your list.

• Looks better in narrow view
  We’ve make some improvements to make your lists look better when in narrow columns on your space.

APIs and Feeds
We wanted to give you the ability to access your Spaces information from a variety of locations and services, so we added new RSS feeds and opened up our APIs to allow you more freedom. Go crazy with your Spaces data!   Visit: http://dev.live.com/spaces over the next few days for more information. Note: Only spaces with permissions set to public can use RSS feeds and APIs.

Profile Updates
There are some new, cool additions to profiles.

• Enhanced contact updates preview
  When you see a profile picture on Spaces, just put your cursor over the picture and you can see a lot more information about the person than ever before.

Have fun using the new features! And don’t forget the Windows Live Spaces Team is looking forward to seeing what you do with your space and what you think about the updates.  So hey why not leave them a comment and let them know what you think.