Redmond, Washington — Years after following the foot-steps of its rivals Yahoo and Google, the Redmond Vole has finally integrated around 20 new third-party applications into Windows Live Messenger with its Windows Live Hotmail e-mail service, in an effort to make its online services hub more like a social-networking site vis-à-vis Facebook.
Word of Web Messenger being combined into Windows Live Hotmail has been getting louder and louder for months. However, the move makes obvious sense as Microsoft has been making continuous advances in integrating its various Windows Live-branded services together. For instance, last November Microsoft introduced social networking like features to Windows Live that make it easier for users to share information, like blog posts or photos from the various Windows Live services with one another.
The company already has included the feature for users in France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the U.K., and has begun gradually adding to user accounts in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States, the company said in a blog post.
Ultimately, the feature is available in 13 countries through Hotmail and also through the people page that lists a Windows Live user’s contacts.
According to observations made by Brian Hall, general manager of Windows Live Business Group, on Microsoft’s Web site, an update this week to the portal gives users the ability to add 20 third-party content sites to their home pages, bringing the total number of third-party sites to 30.
By adding these sites, users can keep track of activities and get status updates from contacts using those other sites directly in Windows Live, he said. Partners include Twitter, the photo-sharing site Flickr, the music social network iLike, and Yelp, which allows people to review local services in their area. Facebook also has integration with many of these third parties.
A significant addition is that users will be able to send instant messages without having to download a client program, Web Messenger counts as just another location: you can choose to sign out from other locations you are signed into for the account. Furthermore, if a contact that sent you an e-mail is in your contact list, e-mails from them will tell you if they are online via the same status icons found in Windows Live Messenger and you can start a chat with the sender straight from the e-mail by clicking on them. In addition to Hotmail, the Messenger feature is also available on Windows Live People, which is essentially a list of all your Windows Live contacts.
The Redmond Vole has also added the ability for people to pull contacts from MySpace, hi5 and the Tagged social-networking site into Windows Live so they can merge contact and friend lists from various social-networking sites into one place, Hall said. The company already gives users the ability to do that with Facebook and LinkedIn.
Despite its seeming backwardness, Hotmail remains the most popular e-mail service around the world, according to comScore. In the United States, though, it is basically tied for second place with AOL behind Yahoo and losing visitors.
Analysts have concluded that integrating social-networking features also are a way for Microsoft to retain users, as many people are beginning to use the e-mail services of sites like Facebook in lieu of other e-mail applications and Web-based mail from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.