Do you have a Windows Live account? Chances are the answer is yes – most of us have – at some point – used a hotmail account, messenger, a “passport” site, MSN service or Windows Live ID.
In my case the answer is yes to all of the above – I’ve also used a bunch of other Microsoft services over the years, including Xbox Live, Office Live Small Business, Live Mesh, Live Spaces, BPOS etc. And as part of work of course I have a Windows Live ID that is associated with our Microsoft Partner Network account that gives me to access the plethora of Microsoft services that come with being a Certified Partner, MCP & SBSC.
That said – I generally ignore Windows Live for the most part. WL is a fairly irrelevant service as far as I’m concerned. That may seem to be a contradiction given the above paragraph but what I mean is that the WL aspect is just a sign-in mechanism for other services that I use, not something I think about in and of itself. When I play Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit online using Xbox Live, I’m not really thinking about my WL account. It is purely a saved credential that auto-signs in and I never really notice it – you get my drift.
So, the only time I really notice my WL account is if I’m signing into messenger – and I can’t remember the last time I did that. Messenger is obtrusive and distracting and I avoid it as much as possible. In my case there are a couple of other times I use a WL account. I sign into a few Microsoft websites regularly – the Partner Network, the Volume Licensing Service Centre etc. And of course when I was using a Windows Phone 7 device I had that associated with my Live account.
Anyway to get to the point – a friend (yes, he’s a bit of a geek) just pointed out to me that Windows Live now integrates with a bunch of other online services. When they said “a lot” of services, I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw when I signed in to take a look for myself. The breadth of integration is insane, and even more so given that I didn’t even know about this! Do Microsoft spend all this time developing integration like this only to hide it away from everyone? Or do they only talk about them on sites like msn.com and hotmail.com – that I never visit?
Anyway, here’s a peek at a panel you see when you sign in to your live account at www.live.com:
And if you click the link to add more services, you’re presented with the following page listing the “featured” services you can connect to Windows Live:
Yes, this is just the featured list. If you go an get the full listing today there are fully eighty separate services that you can connect with your WL account. A lot of the services are well known – Facebook, WordPress, MySpace, Flickr, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Qype, Picasa, DailyMotion, YouTube etc. But then there’s also a raft of services that I’ve certainly never heard of. Have you ever heard of 11870.com, Biip.no, Azbuz, Hyves, sevenload, Tabelog, wat.tv???? Insane!
So I’m giving in – I’m curious, after all – so I decided to go ahead and link with Facebook. This is another surprise to me – not just the breadth of integration options as above – but the depth of integration within a single option. Here are the various things that tie together when you connect Messenger to Facebook:
And the various bits of information that Messenger requests access to from Facebook:
Now of course there’s a second set of privacy settings you need to manage – and another list of “friends” you need to consider when publishing information out to Facebook. In a lot of cases people use Messenger for work – to stay in easy IM contact with customers, suppliers etc. They often have their messenger ID on their email signature and encourage folks to use that as a channel of communication. To them my advice is – don’t connect with Facebook, keep it simple! Unless you already use Facebook for work (and I question the wisdom of this) and are already in the habit of being very careful about what you post and allow to be seen on Facebook, I’d say it’s probably best to avoid linking the two.
Right – now I’m off to push the limits and check my Messenger contact list & privacy settings to see if I can afford for Messenger and Facebook to meet. Wish me luck, because right after that I’m going to be connecting Messenger to LinkedIn, Picasa, WordPress, YouTube….
But they’re pretty interesting features, and I can see them being of some use, even if in just limited ways as free radio stations or free conference calls! But I actually caught a bit of one yesterday and immediately saw something interesting .. see the