the possibility of very little or no ads.
msn communities come free, with the price of msn's ads littered all over the average community's web page. tripod offers the user a choice between a single ad embedded into the web page and pop-up ads. one could not respectably discuss such serious issues while msn's ads for online dating services flashed without rest just above.

much more web space.
tripod offers 50 megabytes of storage with their free accounts. msn web communities used to provide 30 mb, then they drastically reduced that amount to 3 mb, imposing a fine upon those who needed more space. msn even imposed page size restrictions on web pages (measured in kilobytes), which is unprecedented and ridiculous.

control
with tripod, the user has about 95% control. on the other hand, the msn web community manager has about 4%, with msn still unsatisfied with 96% control. at tripod, you have knowledge of everything you create and upload to their servers. you have complete control over design and layout (for example, more space per page; more surface area for content). with msn, it's the opposite.
at msn web communities, msn gave managers very little control, therefore i couldn't take steps to ensure that a web page would be viewed as was intended in browsers other than microsoft's internet explorer. at tripod, i have more control, so i can take as much precautions as possible to make sure a visitor sees the web page the way i built it, despite the browser used.

a more professional environment
tripod offers many professional features that enable me to offer you a view, presented interestingly. some of these are ftp support, support for macromedia flash content, cgi support, and more practical url's.