Windows Live received a major makeover last November, and part of this makeover included the ability to aggregate updates from third-party services like Flickr, Pandora, or Twitter. Today, Microsoft announced that its users will now also be able to import their updates from 20 additional partners, including Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug, and Facebook. In addition, users will soon be able to invite their friends on MySpace, Hi5, and Tagged to join their Windows Live network. In Europe, Microsoft Live has also teamed up with a number of popular local services like Hyves, Dailymotion.com, and Dada.
Integration With 20 New Services – MySpace Coming Soon
Windows Live users will also soon be able to aggregate updates from MySpace, though according to Microsoft, this integration is still a few months off.
Just like before, your friends will be able to see your updates from these services on their Windows Live home pages, though your friends can also opt-out of your updates, or updates from select services. If you are a prolific digger, for example, your friends can choose not to see an update for every single story you dugg.
If you have a Windows Live account, this link will take you to a page with all the new web activities you can now import. As usual, Microsoft is rolling these updates out slowly, so your account may not feature these new services just yet.
Functionally, the biggest update to Windows Live is that users can now easily invite friends on other social networks into their Windows Live network (and vice versa).
Web IM for Hotmail
In addition, Microsoft also released Web IM for Hotmail today in a number of countries, including the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Brazil.
Looks Like This Strategy is Working for Windows Live
In many ways, this update makes Windows Live into even more of a mainstream version of the current non-beta, non-real-time version of FriendFeed. You can easily aggregate most of your online activity and your friends can easily follow all of your updates on their Windows Live accounts.
According to both Compete and Quantcast, Windows Live has seen its traffic grow rapidly since it updated its services last November, and the addition of these new web activities will surely not hurt the site’s traffic.
