« SkyDrive.com finally gets URL shortening service SDRV.MSWindows 8 Release Preview to come with built-in News, Sports and Travel apps, powered by Bing »

Microsoft refocuses Messenger Social, discontinues “web activities” from July 2012

May 18, 2012 7:40 am by damaster | 18 comments

Since the release of Windows Live Wave 3, Microsoft added what was then an extension of Windows Live Spaces, allowing every Windows Live ID holder to own a profile, and is able to connect and share their updates with others. The aim was to have “your life, all in one place” by allowing users to connect “web activities” to their Windows Live Profile, which then Windows Live will pull all of the user’s updates and activities on these services to their own Windows Live Profile. It was Microsoft’s attempt at creating a social network, which was heavily based on the Windows Live Spaces architecture.

Since then, with the introduction of Windows Live Wave 4, Microsoft improved upon these “web activities”, and created what they called “connected services”. These are limited to a few social networks only, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Whilst “web activities” only pulled the user’s own content on these networks and fanned them out to other Windows Live users, “connected services” allowed users to pull in all their contacts from these social networks into Windows Live, and view their friend’s social updates all in one place – Messenger Social. Contacts from different networks are automatically de-duplicated, so you can learn about all of your contact’s updates across the web all in one place. This formed the basis behind Windows Phone’s “Putting People First” experience, and soon also Windows 8’s People experience.

Microsoft has realised the potential of the newer “connected services” experience, and realised that instead of creating another social network, users preferred simply “connecting” their social networks to Windows Live (or Windows Phone), without having to manage yet another Profile. As such, Microsoft has recently made some changes to its Messenger Social and Windows Live Profile services, re-focussing the purpose of these services. These changes include:

Discontinuing “web activities”, which simply shared updates to other Messenger friends, while retaining and continuously improving the “connected services” (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, and more). Users are now presented with the following message:
In fact, Microsoft has already removed all the “web activities” from Windows Live Profile’s Services page. All you see left is the below services, which gives you a good indication of which services will be improved upon in the near future (i.e. YouTube/Google, Sina Weibo):
Removing unnecessary profile information such as “Favorite things”, General profile info, Education info, and Social info, whilst retaining core contact information. Users visiting the Favorite things page are now greeted with the following message:

What do you think about this move by Microsoft? Do you think they’re doing the right thing with this refocus of Messenger Social? Let us know in the comments below.

This entry was posted in Featured, News and tagged Messenger Social, Profile, Services, Wave 5, Web Activities, Windows Live. Bookmark the permalink.

http://twitter.com/Rafyelzz Rafael Muñoz
Moving to simpler and unified environment. . +1 for them.
http://doctorwhofan98.wordpress.com/ doctorwhofan98
Will there be Wave 5 M4 in July 2012 then? They gave an indication of when a release would occur when the message about Profile Notes closing appeared about a year ago, and again with the SkyDrive email publishing feature more recently.
- Damaster – LiveSide.net
  That’s a good guess. Given Microsoft had been releasing each milestone on a quarterly basis, the last update (M3) was done in April 2012, so July-August timeframe sounds reasonable for the next update.
  In previous Waves, usually “M4″ is the final version of that Wave (the first being M0 – so five milestones in total). Previously you just don’t get to see M0 to M3 (except public betas for Essentials) – but with Wave 5 each milestone is a public release.
  - http://doctorwhofan98.wordpress.com/ doctorwhofan98
    Ooh, I wonder what Wave 6 will bring (when it’s released… hopefully later this year, not in a few years time)
  - http://gregsedwards.wordpress.com Greg Edwards
    Why do we assume that Microsoft will continue the “wave” lockstep update model for future enhancements, now that the Windows Live brand is being retired? I’d be more inclined to believe that each service and its associated apps (ex. Hotmail, the Windows 8 Mail, Calendar, and People apps) will share some kind of update schedule that’s independent of the other services.
    - Damaster – LiveSide.net
      We’re not. Wave 5 could possibly be the last wave, and the future could be as you said, each component/service (i.e. Hotmail, SkyDrive, Messenger/Skype, and Windows 8 apps) being individually updated.
      Even with Wave 5 there is a shift to frequent quarterly updates, with each “milestone” focusing on a different service (for example, the December update focused greatly on Hotmail, whiles the April one focused on SkyDrive). However, you can see that the roll-out of updates in the current wave at least is still made across the board (e.g. this Messenger social change came at the same time as the SkyDrive URL Shortening update), with the exception of Hotmail. Hence we believe, at least for the current Wave 5, updates still comes in “waves”. However how future updates will plan out, we don’t know.
      - …winston
        Afaics…and it’s been evident for quite some time. There’s a much bigger picture than ‘Live Waves’….think of the future as releases relative to ‘Windows’ and the inherent integration of apps and services. Win8 is a clear indication that release overlap exists across products and divisions.
    - http://twitter.com/contextfree contextfree
      hmm – there’s still a Windows Live division organizationally at Microsoft, though.
James
I love this new simplified approach!
wadedorrell
Yep. Ever since wave 4 they’ve been making the right moves on this, although it was perhaps a wave or two late, as there was clearly a lot of investment in building the Messenger/Spaces features. Either way since wave 4 they’ve moved from being “just a” social network to being a platform for any social network to provide best experience on Windows… the cross-device SSO and merge/history type improvements this enables is killer… which is a great strategy.
http://gregsedwards.wordpress.com Greg Edwards
As an avid user of Windows Live, I can say it’s a bittersweet moment. It feels like I’m watching the lights in my little world being turned off one by one. At the same time, I think it’s a smart move by Microsoft to simplify, as almost no one I know “IRL” actually uses any of its social features. Everyone is already over on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
At the height of Windows Live, I had a pretty slick little ecosystem built around myself there, with a customized space, some groups, a profile page decked out with all my favorite stuff and scads of connected web activities, alerts, even a FrameIt feed. Live Mesh was syncing stuff all over my connected devices. I had figured out how to get Windows Live to post my updates to Twitter, even after it was removed as a web activity. I got to be a Windows Live MVP. But aside from a few WL friends I’ve made, it’s turned out to be mostly an echo chamber.
It’s not that Windows Live was a bad idea at all. A lot of what made it neat has been duplicated by Facebook, Twitter, and G+, among others. If anything, Microsoft was a few years ahead of the social curve. It just never gained the necessary momentum it needed to become a real contender. I guess you can’t win ‘em all.
Now that it’s common knowledge that Windows Live is being discontinued as a brand, and its features are being scaled back or deprecated, it’s kind of a relief, because I no longer feel like I’m cheating on Windows Live when I use other services like Facebook, because I feel like Microsoft has done a good job of partnering with them in some relevant ways. I’ll still continue to seek value in using the remaining services to manage my personal, digital life. Hotmail is still the best email service around, SkyDrive has become a really serious contender in the cloud storage space. Messenger is still kind of a wildcard, but I’m confident that Skype will eventually integrate/supercede it to renew Microsoft’s competitive edge in messaging.
So everything comes and goes. I’m still a Microsoft fan and I’m optimistic as hell for Windows 8 and Apollo.
Kit Y
The “Contacts” is a mess, fix it!
- http://josedmorales.net/ Joe Morales
  Tell me about it! Windows Live pulls out Facebook pages as contacts. Horrible.
cmwind
LONG overdue… finally excited for the future of MS web services again
cmwind
I hope they add Xbox Live as a connected service so that gamertags can be linked to contacts the same way twitter, fb, etc are
KY
General info info page (https://profile.live.com/details/Edit/About) has a banner ”
This page will be available until February 2012.”?
- http://doctorwhofan98.wordpress.com/ doctorwhofan98
  I’ve got that as well. Weird.
Mathias
Very good!