Microsoft’s Windows Live Gets Social

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

When you think of Microsoft, you might think of stodgy. Certainly not hip (they tried that with the Seinfeld ads and we know how that worked out), right?

Despite that, Microsoft is trying to create an experience with its Windows Live site akin to Facebook and MySpace: creating a social network that they call “Your Life. Your Stuff. All Together with Windows Live.”

They also call it “Keeping your life in sync.”

Prior to this, Windows Live has seemingly been a pasted-together site with Live search and other different services like email and the like. But now, if Microsoft gets its wish, Windows Live Home at home.live.com will be “your home base on the Web.”

Stuff is still being rolled out; it’s not all there yet. But you can find out a lot more about what’s coming out, as well as beta versions of the new applications, at http://www.windowslive.com/Home.

Services like Hotmail get a revamp (and a much-criticized one, at that), while Windows Live SkyDrive gets a bump in storage to 25 GB from 5 GB. The big news, though, is the announcement of relationships with over 50 third-party services. As Microsoft says:

Microsoft is collaborating with leading companies including Flickr, LinkedIn Corp., Pandora Media Inc., Photobucket Inc., Twitter, WordPress and Yelp Inc. to integrate activities on third-party sites into Windows Live through a new profile and What’s New feed.

What’s New feeds can be customized to reflect any updates you make or receive, either from a Windows Live service or one of the third-party services. Add Tweets from your friends for example. Sound social? Yep.

Typical of a cloud-based rollout, the beta online services announced today will not be available immediately, but will be “will begin rolling out to customers in the U.S. over the coming weeks and will be made available globally in 54 countries and in 48 languages by early 2009,” according to Microsoft.

Highlights of the changes:

• Windows Live is making new social features available to all customers, including an updated profile, a “what’s new” feed of activities across the network and Web, photo sharing, and on-the-go access from virtually any device with Windows Live SkyDrive. Online storage is increasing from 5 GB to 25 GB.

• Windows Live Messenger, the No. 1 instant messaging service worldwide with more than 330 million active customers, now includes more personalization, a “what’s new” feed with updates from contacts across the Web, drag-and-drop photo sharing in the conversation window, a favorites list to designate the most important contacts, and group IM to chat simultaneously with up to 20 people at the same time.

• Windows Live Hotmail, one of the largest e-mail services worldwide with more than 375 million active customers, is getting a significant upgrade. It is now much faster and has 80 percent more effective spam filtering1 compared with previous versions of Hotmail. Upcoming changes include the ability to bring multiple e-mail accounts together, the ability to put multiple e-mail addresses onto almost any device, increased storage, and a revamped calendar that makes it easier to share calendars with others, subscribe to multiple calendars and use your calendar with Microsoft Outlook.

• Windows Live Groups, a place for groups to collaborate online, includes a shared calendar, shared storage, a shared e-mail address, and shared instant messaging.

All of these services work with Windows Live Essentials, a suite of applications for communication and sharing that also works with leading e-mail, photo and blogging services worldwide.

Can Microsoft pull it off? The monolith could, if executed properly, be a centralized location for all things social. But, if you look, you’ll see a few big names missing from their list of partners: Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Google, AOL. If it wants to bring your life “All Together” it needs to fix that.

Microsoft’s posted some introductory videos. Check ‘em out.

See how Windows Live helps keep your life in sync

Take a quick look at the new things coming your way with the new version of Windows Live

Tour through the latest Windows Live Messenger