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Microsoft Service Status page gets Metro-style update, shows service reshuffle in Wave 5

Aug 2, 2012 4:23 am by damaster | 12 comments

Along with the release of Outlook.com and the new People website, the Microsoft Service Status page, now located at http://status.live.com, also got a Metro-style facelift yesterday. Check it out below:

What’s interesting about the update is that the new page gives us an idea of what Microsoft services (seems like this is how they refer to the formerly Windows Live services collectively now) are now considered in scope in the Wave 5 update. If we compare the list of services above against what we saw in November last year, we would’ve seen quite a few differences:

Service renames – this includes renaming Windows Live ID to Microsoft account, Contacts to People, and Social updates to Connected services.
In particular with the last case, with the refocus of what was known as Messenger Social and removal of “web activities”, the focus had shifted to the few but important Connected services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Sina Weibo, and coming soon, Skype. Rather than attempting to have another social network, which kind of started in Windows Live Wave 3 where each ID had their own Windows Live Profile, Microsoft sees the future where users connect all other social networks to their Microsoft account, which seems to be a better model. As such, we will soon see http://profile.live.com branded as part of Microsoft account, the removal of most profile information and de-emphasis of status updates, and as you may have noticed already, the discontinuation of Windows Live Home in Outlook.com.
New services – the new page now tracks and reports on the real-time status of Outlook.com. But given Hotmail is running in parallel with Outlook.com (which is currently still in preview), you can actually see the status for both Outlook and Hotmail listed on the page.
Removed services – for those who had been keeping count, one service actually had dropped off the list – Windows Live Mesh. With the availability of the SkyDrive for Windows and Mac apps, which serves to gradually replace Windows Live Mesh, we will continue to see the de-emphasis on Windows Live Mesh and http://devices.live.com, which are kept only to support existing users who haven’t made the move to SkyDrive.

What do you think about Microsoft’s strategy in refocusing and realigning their former Windows Live services? Do you think they’re on the right track? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks Picturepan2 from LiveSino.net for the heads up.

This entry was posted in News and tagged Service Status, UI, Wave 5, Windows Live. Bookmark the permalink.

http://twitter.com/Alimaggs Alastair Maggs
Any news on whether Custom Domains will survive the transition to Wave 5? Slightly concerned that is still has the Wave 3 headers and isn’t linked to anywhere as far as I can see (either on the Windows Live support sites or when creating an account).
http://twitter.com/efjay01 Ef Jay
I wonder if anyone can suggest a replacement for mymsn.com, very useful as it has all my feeds to info i can see quickly. Thanks.
- http://www.LiveSide.net Kip Kniskern – LiveSide.net
  Afraid Google Reader is about the last app standing for an effective RSS reader, although we use it to aggregate our favorite feeds into our “Blogs We Like” section (it’s where I go for a quick check on the latest Microsoft/tech news)
Peter Barrington
I find these updates very encouraging. With all these updates the services feel far more organised and complimentary and as a result have a professional sheen that I think is unmatched elsewhere.
I feel much more confident about the future of these services and actually much more respected as a user.
cmwind
need to kill off messenger… and replace with Skype as a linked service
http://twitter.com/ohfuckinreally Voice of Reason
Kind of pointless.. afaik there is no link to the service status page, and it requires manually typing in the address?
- Damaster – LiveSide.net
  You wouldn’t visit this page normally if everything was working fine. Only time you’d do that is if you think something is wrong and not connecting. In which case usually the error message should say something like “Check service status” and link you to this page.
  - http://twitter.com/Alimaggs Alastair Maggs
    Also available by clicking on “Help” from any of the properties. Makes sense.
olibourgeoisie
does anyone know if with the abandonment of the windows live brand there’ll be a shift away from the live.com domain? or are they going to slyly meld it into their new brandspace?
- http://twitter.com/samvscat Samantha Watson
  I feel like they have so much stuff under live.com (the entire login and account system for all the Microsoft online services) that they will keep using it even if the “Live” brand name is dead. Because what’s the alternative? They won’t go back to msn.com, passport.net is long gone, microsoft.com is the corporate site, and it wouldn’t do any good to file things under outlook.com, skydrive.com etc. because they’d still need somewhere to store the central login system. So that’s why I think we’ll be stuck with the now “de facto” live.com for some time to come.
http://ghadzhigeorgiev.wordpress.com Georgi Hadzhigeorgiev
Well, there is a particular Mesh function which is extremely useful – syncing unlimited amounts of files and sizes across devices without uploading them to the Cloud (alphas only go to the server, actual transfers are direct PC2PC). This I use to make a backup copy on between home PC’s. Why is it useful – because it keeps track of changes (new files, deleted files, updated files) you made automatically and synchronising them on background. I use this to sync over 150GB photos, docs, etc. Imagine you have to do this manually?!
Other nice function is the remote access to/from trusted devices.
In general SkyDrive replaces only the 5GB cloud file space that Mesh provided.
Is there will be any replacement of Mesh that will provide the other two functions?
Or at least keep it live until there will be?
- Steven
  I don’t think that Microsoft will let Live Mesh and the new SkyDrive coexist. However, you can checkout Cubby (www.cubby.com). It’s a good alternative!