If you’re using Windows Live Messenger, and Windows Live, it’s YOURS! According to a study by Microsoft Research, most people can be connected to one another in about 6.6 degrees of separation. I know this is a bit of old news, having come out at the beginning of August, but I thought it an important note because your social network is about to get better!
Say hello to Windows Live wave 3. The Windows Live teams have added a ton of new features which bring newer social networking aspects to Windows Live and gives us a fresh new look to the Windows Live properties.
I’m focusing on how Windows Live Messenger will start bringing different parts of your Windows Live experience together into one place. Before, your Windows Live Messenger contacts and Hotmail contacts were one in the same. Then Live Spaces had it’s own network of contacts, and if you participating in MSN Groups, that was yet another group of contacts. The new Live Messenger pulls all of these people into one list now and allows you to see all of your contacts from each of these different kinds of groups.
From the top down, here are just some of the changes:
Your personal icon area is more customizable. Not only can you choose custom colours, but you can choose custom backgrounds as well. If the preset images aren’t to your liking you can add your own by dragging and dropping from Windows Live Photo Gallery, right into Messenger. You’ll also notice that many of the icons are now gone, except for mail making for a cleaner look.
Contacts from your Windows Live Groups will now show up in a “Groups” category and you can mark certain contacts as “Favourites” which will keep them at the top of your contact list window. As usual, you will still be able to sort your contacts by category, or by status, as well as display them by their username or by their first and last name from their contact card.
Tabs have been removed from the side of Messenger and dropped down below the “What’s New” portion of Messenger.
Also new on Windows Live Messenger is the “What’s New” pane at the bottom. This carousel section keeps you up-to-date on what the people in your social network are doing. When your friends or family post a new blog, photo, or note, a notice will appear in this section which you can click on to see more.
Several of the great features have remained in Messenger as well. Word Wheel helps you search for contacts if, like me, you have a couple hundred to look through. Contact cards are still around and are accessed by hovering your mouse over your contacts name, and selecting “View Contact Card” from the new pop-up menu.
My favourite feature, Live Contacts is still around as well. Live Contacts allows you to keep your address book up-to-date by subscribing to your friends’ contact information. When they update their personal information in their profile, it’s automatically pushed out to subscribers so it’s always current. The great thing about this feature is you get to control who gets to see your information with permissions settings, so you know only the people you want to, are getting your information.
There really is so much more to explore with the new Windows Live releases, but that is for another blog posting to talk about. 
