Windows Live Profile Wave 4: LinkedIn to become a Connected Service, and display names to go away

By damaster on June 19, 2010 3:53 PM

29 comments

Today on the Inside Windows Live team blog Omar Shahine (Principal Lead Program Manager for Windows Live) made a blog post about the new Windows Live Profile with particular emphasis to changes made to privacy control. We covered the new enhanced privacy controls in Profile briefly before, and also gave you an overview of what’s new in Windows Live Profile too. But there’s a few things in Omar’s post that we haven’t told you about. Firstly, besides Facebook and MySpace, there will be one more Service joining Windows Live – LinkedIn.

LinkedIn had always been missing from the list of Windows Live web activities ever since Wave 3, although you were able to import contacts from LinkedIn into Windows Live. In Wave 4, instead of simply bringing it in as a “web activity” (one-way social feeds only), according to Omar’s post it sounds like LinkedIn will be available as a “Service”, meaning there will be two-way interaction between Windows Live and LinkedIn (posting social updates to and from LinkedIn from Windows Live, as well as automatic de-duplication of LinkedIn contacts with your Windows Live contact list).

Secondly, there are a few changes in your Windows Live Profile which cleans things up a little bit, clearing up the confusion brought in back in Wave 3 about networks, friends, contacts and profiles, as well as the removal of display names:

1. Your Messenger friends and Profile friends are merged into one list.

Starting in this release, there is only one type of friend relationship in Windows Live: Messenger friends. We made this change because we heard lots of feedback that people didn’t understand the difference between Profile friends and Messenger friends. Now they’re all just "friends," but you can easily limit access to your more private information for some of those friends.

2. You have just one name: your full name, and just one profile picture, which are both part of your profile, and always visible to friends.

In the past there was a lot inconsistency across different Windows Live products. For example, you could have two pictures, one that appeared to your Messenger friends and another that appeared on your Profile. Additionally, you could choose to show only a "display name" in some places, while in other places, your full name would appear, and in still others, only your first name. To cut through all this confusion, we had to rethink our model from the ground up, design what we wanted to have, and then work to transition our users.

The end result is that your full name and picture will always be visible to your friends, but you have complete control over who your friends are. Your full name does not become available to friends until we’ve informed you that this is happening, and given you an opportunity to change some settings if you want to. You can, of course, change your full name to whatever you want it to be, and you can always choose the Private setting if you don’t want your profile to be visible to non-friends or findable in a web search.

This change was important to ensure that our network is one where people can find you using your real name; people who see your comments, photos, and invitations know who they came from; and your appearance is consistent across all of our web and client applications.

For some, the move away from a separate display name will be perceived as a loss of functionality. But this change, along with numerous other enhancements, will help curb abuse and scams on our network.

This is why from all the screenshots and videos we’ve seen of Messenger, the contact list always show the contact’s first and last name. Looks like display names are now a thing of the past – except for Wave 3 (Windows XP) users of course. What do you think of these changes? Leave us a comment below! Smile

Posted in News | Tags: Contacts, LinkedIn, Profile, Services, Wave 4, Windows Live

Comments

Thiago M.

Unified friends list: Awesome!
Unified display picture: Awesome!
Not having display name: I will miss it a little, but it’s not the end of the world.

I was for a long time waiting for the friends lists and display pictures to be unified. Thanks God [and Microsoft :P] it’s finally being done!
http://twitter.com/sayjay09 Jamie White

You know it amuses me people still use XP, here we are 2 OS releases later, Windows 7 is technically alot better than XP so its good Windows Live Wave 4 Won’t support it. Move on people :p
Ali

Great stuff. Would like to see some more activities added for wave 4… In particular, Foursquare and Xbox Live (I want my achievements in my feed, or maybe a daily/weekly summary)… But the Linked In stuff is good!

http://gregsedwards.wordpress.com Greg Edwards

I’d like for Zune Social integration to make a comeback.

http://twitter.com/surilamin surilamin

Thank God they got rid of display names, it was always annoying trying to figure out who someone was especially with all the emoticons people would put in.

JSYOUNG571

Exactly! It is really annoying in the messenger buddy list and Hotmail contacts list. I have contacts who think they are celebrities with one short name.

emil

finally!!! perfect!!!

now full sync integration with one list and app for skydrive, contacts, sms, email, calendar, tasks ecc for pc, mobile and web
Bastian-kuehl

I just have one (silly) question: how can I distinguish between contacts which are added to messenger and with which I can chat and those with witch I can not? It is like this: I entered the mobile phone number of some contacts and now they appear together with my messenger contacts in the messenger and in windows live in “netzwerk – in messenger” (german) as well. However the contacts with the mobile phone number are not necessarily messenger contacts! You know what I mean? They are not friends or something, they are only in my adress book – that’s it.

Mario Albertico

This is the mess I’m also hoping they have a great solution for. I’m going to have loads of contacts from Windows Live and Facebook who don’t have Messenger; if they are all loaded into Messenger without effective organization or ridding of multiple copies, then we might experience a few days of summer cleaning :p

JSYOUNG571

That is where categories come in for separating all your contacts. I noticed that Windows Live put all my network people on my messenger. What I did was create categories from my Hotmail Contact list. I have Family, Friends, and Space Buddies. I put all the people that I don’t do chatting with on messenger who is on my Network over in the categories Space buddies. I put my friends under my friend’s category and my family under my family category. Once I open Windows Live Messenger, I can see my categories and how I divided everyone up in them..Everybody that is under Space buddies I blocked individually, because we do not chat with each other on messenger. When the new messenger comes out, we will be able to block categories instead of blocking people individually which would save a lot of time.Also in Windows Live Hotmail contacts, you can click on options and on the options menu at the bottom there is a option for cleaning up duplicate contacts. Windows Live Hotmail will also give you an option of mergeing duplicate contacts also. This is Wave 3 Windows Live Hotmail. If you got Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4..I am not sure. If you are talking about the social messenger network on your Windows Live Homepage, there is not a solution for that yet.

JSYOUNG571

If the friends you want to enter are Windows Live Messenger users and you want them on your Windows Live Messenger; The best way to add them is by adding them in your Windows Live Hotmail contacts and NOT Windows Live Messenger. Add there email address if you only want to email them and DO NOT want them in your Windows Live Messenger. If you want them in Windows Live Messenger, add their Windows Live ID after the emaill address part. Whatever you do, do not do adding on Windows Live Messenger. Do your adding on Windows Live Hotmail Contacts. It is much easier that way. The only time you should use Windows Live Messenger for adding people is when you have Yahoo contacts that you want to add on your messenger. When you add them by Windows Live Messenger…skip putting their mobile number in, else Windows Live Messenger will automatically add them as a text mobile icon when they are not available. Just my experience.

Bastian-kuehl

thats what I mean, the thing with the mobile icon. I added the phone number in Windows Live Mail (not hotmail, not messenger) and now they appear in messenger. dont know how to undo it…
the idea with the categories is good, but you have to do it all manually. just one automatic category would be nice for the contacts that have messenger. well not only “have” but the one I have added.

JSYOUNG571

When it happened to me. I went on my Windows Live Messenger list and clicked on tools in the top task bar and scrolled down to clicking on options. Once I clicked on options, I looked for Privacy and clicked on it. In the privacy you can see the the allow and block list. On the allow list I would look for the phone number or contacts name and right click on it. You should be able to block, delete, or do both. In this case you would just want to delete it. You can delete anybody if they have not added you on their side. If they did add you on their side, you can only block them (One of the biggest complaints I have against Windows Live Messenger). Most likely you are going to have to re add the person you wanted on, but make sure you do it through Windows Live Hotmail.

Bastian-kuehl

thanks man

bernard

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but you can no longer send private messages to your friends anymore.

JSYOUNG571

OMG! I just noticed it too. But the option for sent and received is still there. Maybe they plan on releasing it after the beta.
JSYOUNG571

@ Benard. I did some investigating and yes we can still use private messages. You just have to go to your contact list and click on your friends icon and drop down menu should have send private message. Also you can send private messages on certain space pages of your friends also.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/QJPFQYJVYNEANNHZDLEDJLYCWU Cumbia G

In that case it just means that they’re making it hard for people to send private messages.

Daysi

No custom display name? So everyone would know my real name? Stupid step, Microsoft!

http://twitter.com/KEN_td90uk td90uk

Everyone knows your name on Facebook, yet no one complains. I do agree, though, that these days; privacy is everything, but when in Rome.
Damaster – LiveSide.net

No, not everyone would know your real name.
Firstly, you can set your privacy settings so that only your friends that you’ve added to Messenger can view your real name. (This is the default option anyway).
Secondly, you can set your privacy settings so that only the friends you have added can view your Windows Live Profile (where your name appears).
So…assuming that you don’t just go add ANYONE as a friend on Messenger/Windows Live (this means you may be adding spammers), your real name won’t appear to anyone else except the people you know.

http://twitter.com/AlexMedia Alex van Herwijnen

Merging contacts list: love it
Display names going away: absolutely HATE it. And I already complained about it.

I’m not sure what they’re trying to achieve… are they trying to get people to open up, like Facebook? That’s probably not going to happen. People will just remove the last name from their profile and use that as a new way to set display names – mark my words.

CookieRevised

200% correct….

It is one thing to try “curb abuse and scams”, and make everything consistent. But it is one hell of a big move to cut out display names _and_ make your first and last name visible to all your friends.

For starters, there are multiple grades of friends! I find it completely ridiculous that MS didn’t thought of that as even the programmers etc all have different grades of ‘friends’ in their contact lists too (I’ve seen it!). If there is one thing that Facebook has been teaching us it is that the concept of ‘friend’ has been kind of lost (don’t know how I can’t describe it better, but you know what I mean I hope). The whole ‘friend’-business is stupid. You can not have 200 trustable friends. You can have 200 internet buddies, but that does not mean you trust them 100% with all your private information. You can however trust family for example with your private data.

On top of that, the whole point of internet is often that you can be kind of anonymous. Making your first and last name mandatory, and killing display pictures is NOT going to keep abuse and scams away!!! The abusers simply make up false names and what not. So, in the end, all MS did with this move is killing of a feature without solving anything, at all…

For those who say “But everybody on Facebook already knows your name” => Not everybody is on Facebook (or other social network)! This is also not a matter of adding ‘everybody’ or not. Because as I said before: there are multiple grades of ‘friends’. And one thing does not exclude the other! It is not because you do not want to share your real name with person x that you also do not want to talk to person x via Messenger.

Damaster – LiveSide.net

Display picture is not going away – they’re consolidating them so that there’s only one display picture across all of Windows Live.Also, as stated in Omar’s post under the heading “Close friends vs. acquaintances”, you can choose to limit profile access to certain “acquaintances” you have. Although it does appear that you cannot limit access to your First and Last names – all of the friends that you have added will be able to see your name. However, besides this, all of the other data on your Profile can be limited to exclude people in your limited “acquaintances” list. Perhaps they should allow you to limit “acquaintances” access to your First and Last name too?

CookieRevised

I meant to say display names, not display pictures… sorry… ;)

Private Private

What? You can’t have a fantasy name and still use Windows Live Messenger? My promise: Forget it. I’m going to switch back to ICQ which is No.1 here in Germany. I don’t want people to know my last name or my mail address just to chat with me. Bye, Bye WLM.

Jcafarley

I couldn’t care less about LinkedIn, when are they going to add proper Twitter integration? It works on the msn.com site, why not with Windows Live? It’s ridiculous.

Damaster – LiveSide.net

I agree with Twitter integration. Why am I able to directly post status updates to Facebook via Messenger, but not to Twitter?
However, I don’t think there will be integration of contacts between Twitter and Windows Live – it wouldn’t make sense that if you follow Barack Obama (for example), he would appear on your contact list in Windows Live? Twitter is quite different in nature in this sense when compared to Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn…etc.

Jcafarley

Yeah, I don’t care about the contact lists, I just want to be able to see what my friends are posting, post my own stuff and reply to things. As I said, it’s weird you can do this on msn.com but not Messenger Social.

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