Like many of you, I do a ton of different things on the web across a variety of sites and services.  From sharing real-time updates on Twitter to writing a review of my favorite new Seattle restaurant on Yelp, my online activities are as varied as my interests.  I have one group of friends on Facebook, another group on Windows Live and yet another that I communicate with on LinkedIn. While I love the all the ways there are to communicate, it can be daunting to manage all of my different online activities and contact lists, and I would love a way to make my online life just a little simpler.  

20 new web activities to add

That’s why I am excited to announce that within a week, Windows Live will add more ways for you to share your online life with the people you care about. Over the next few days we will add 20 new feed partners to Windows Live.  This means that you’ll be able to add your web activities from more than 30 websites to your Windows Live profile, and your activities on those sites will then appear on Windows Live.  The new partners include Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, and SmugMug and other partners. By adding your activities from these sites, it’s easier than ever to share your activities from across the Web on Windows Live.

Now when I update my status or share pictures on sites like Facebook, Fotolog, metroFLOG, Photobucket, or SmugMug, I can choose to have that activity automatically added to  “What’s new with Rob” on my profile, and this is reflected throughout Windows Live.

Similarly, when I use Digg, Facebook, or StumbleUpon to recommend an article or website, I can choose to have it show up automatically in “What’s new with Rob,” so people in my network can see it right away.

  

You’ll be able to add all of the new web activities (plus the dozen current ones) directly from the Web activities link on your profile.

Three new ways to add people to your network

To make it easier to keep track of all your contacts in one place, we are also announcing three new contact partners that allow you to share the contacts you have on different social networking sites. Soon,  MySpace, Hi5, and Tagged will join Facebook and LinkedIn as sites that let you invite your friends to Windows Live and vice versa.  Rather than starting from scratch and building up an entirely new contact list, now you can safely and securely invite your contacts directly to Windows Live from one of these five social networks.

Here is a quick 60-second video of how contact importing works courtesy of my colleague, Angus Logan:

    

All of these updates and more will go live in the next week.  In the meantime, Windows Live general manager Brian Hall provides a great overview of what this means for Windows Live customers. For another overview, check out this longer video from Angus.

    

 

Stay tuned here on the Windows Live team blog (or subscribe via RSS) for more information about these and other updates over the next week or so. On behalf of all of the folks who build Windows Live, thanks for trying it out. We hope you like the latest updates!

–  Rob Dolin

  Program Manager, Windows Live team

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April 21, 2009

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