Microsoft rolled out a killer feature that we haven’t talked about yet in their last Windows Live Spaces update.  They are calling it “Windows Live What’s New” and it acts as a direct competitor to Facebook’s News Feed.  I am really glad that they decided to include this feature in the latest release since the News Feed continues to be my absolute favorite feature of Facebook.

What’s New gives you information on what you friends are doing in six different areas: blogs, photos, lists, files, friends, and profiles.  Unfortunately, at this time, events are not included in the feed, but I would assume that they will be included in a later release once Events is more established.

Something else worth noting is that my current top post on Windows Live Spaces occurred about five minutes ago, while the current top item on my Facebook News Feed occurred around two hours ago.  So, it seems that the way that they have Windows Live What’s New fetching information is quicker than the way that Facebook is doing it (although this is not confirmed).

If you want to know more about Windows Live What’s New, make sure to check out Rob Dolin’s (Program Manager for the Spaces Home experience) blog post about it.  You can also check out Dare Obasanjo’s commentary on WL What’s New (he also noticed the speediness of the updates).  It’s good to see Microsoft and Facebook in some healthy competition, despite all of the acquisition rumors.