New York — Social networking aficionados on Facebook will now be able to talk their hearts out with family and friends, as only a few days after announcing social media functionality in the newest version of the Bing toolbar, Microsoft announced that the ability to access Facebook chat within Hotmail is now available in every part of the world that the social network reaches.
The bonds between Microsoft and Facebook getting stronger daily. The feature had previously only been available in six regions and through the Windows Messenger service.
Moreover, about five months back, Microsoft revealed that Hotmail users in Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. could begin to chat with their Facebook friends while checking their email. Now the consolidation of Hotmail and Facebook Chat is complete in every place where Facebook is available.
The Microsoft Windows blog explained:
When we first announced the ability to chat with Facebook friends from Hotmail, we were only able to offer this to customers in six regions. Since then, we have been working with Facebook to increase availability, and a few weeks ago, we announced that the feature was available globally through Messenger.
Today this is available around the world through Hotmail too. Hotmail considers this as a big triumph in the competition against Google’s Gmail e-mail service. “While Gmail beat us to bringing their own chat into the inbox, we have now gone a step further and brought both our own chat and Facebook chat into your inbox,” Dick Craddock, program manager with Hotmail, said in a blog post. “Starting now, we will be displaying notifications of this update in Hotmail.”
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Microsoft is cognizant that they are playing catch up to Gmail in terms of chat inside of web mail. According to the blog post describing the matter, Facebook Chat and Messenger consolidation, now also available inside Hotmail, and integrated now for some time, is finding a resonance with consumers:
Since announcing the availability of Facebook chat in Messenger worldwide two weeks ago, almost 2.5 more million people connected their Facebook accounts to Windows Live, bringing the total to over 20 million customers.
According to the same blog post, 75% of Hotmail users are also Facebook users. And with three out of four Hotmail customers using Facebook, we expect that many more people will want to take advantage of this feature, now that it is available from your Hotmail inbox.
Nevertheless, this is a useful upgrade to Hotmail, and one that might keep users around the world staying in their inboxes for longer periods of time, we are not sure that the UI and UX problems that Hotmail currently suffers from can be beaten back by incremental updates.
What is more significant about the Hotmail chat integration announcement is that it shows that Microsoft and Facebook have a very amicable and healthy relationship. Besides, Hotmail has the user base and potential to be a top flight web mail solution, but until it stops tripping over its shoelaces in terms of design and usability, we fully anticipate for Gmail to continue eating its lunch.
Possibly we will be seeing more collaboration between the two tech titans in the near future.
Finally, if you are interested, the post later suggested, “First connect your Facebook account to Windows Live and make sure the ‘Chat with my Facebook friends in Messenger’ box is checked to give your consent to Facebook. We will then link your accounts (this may take a few minutes), and you can begin to chat from Hotmail just by clicking on the name of a Facebook contact. If this does not work right away, sign out and back in again, and you should be good to go.”