LiveSide - News blog : Social Networks

BuddyFuse International Release: Enhance Windows Live Messenger With Google Talk, Twitter And Hyves

Sunshine — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:52:40 GMT

The first international version of BuddyFuse has been released.

BuddyFuse, created by Dutch Computer Science student Yousef El-Dardiry, Jeroen Bransen and friends, is a free extension for Windows Live Messenger, which seamlessly integrates chat and social networks into the world’s most widely used instant messaging client. BuddyFuse currently enhances Windows Live Messenger by adding support for Google Talk, Twitter and the Dutch social network Hyves.

Long time requested feature
By integrating third party chat and social networks into Windows Live Messenger, BuddyFuse turns one of the most frequently requested features of the chat program into reality. ‘The vast amount of chat and social networking services available today causes people to be ‘online’ on different services at different times. By adding interoperability to Windows Live Messenger people can use an application they are already familiar with to stay in touch with all their friends, regardless of the network they are on.’, says BuddyFuse cofounder Yousef El-Dardiry.

Successful try-out
BuddyFuse has been released to the Dutch public in April 2009, supporting only the Dutch social network Hyves. This beta version has been embraced by the community, with over ten thousand users in the first few weeks. ‘The overwhelming amount of enthusiastic responses motivated us to work on this international release’, says El-Dardiry.

Support for more services such as AIM, ICQ and Facebook is planned for future releases.

You can find the download and more information, including a video impression on the BuddyFuse Website: http://www.buddyfuse.com

SxSW 2010 voting closes Friday; thumbs up for Angus and Bing?

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:43:57 GMT

SxSW Interactive, held every year in Austin, Texas (SxSW 2010 is March 17-21) is fast becoming the social networking place to be. Of course it doesn’t hurt that it’s held in conjunction with SxSW Music, one of the largest showcases of independent music in existence (and a heckuva party, we hear). Anyway this year anyone can vote on what panel topics will be included with a simple thumbs up vote, and voting ends on Friday.

In a blog post today, Angus Logan, Sr. Technical Product Manager for the Windows Live Platform posted on the panels he has in the running. Here’s a sampling:

Web Mail - Is There Room Left to Innovate? (Web Mail)
Web mail has been around the block, and everybody’s got it. Its role may be narrowing to the place you manage online bills, shopping, travel, and photos with mom, with conversations migrating to social networks and IM, but companies are still pounding the digital pavement for new users. If web mail isn't going anywhere, where does it go from here? Vote Now

The Stream Has Become A Tidal Wave (Social Media)
The stream is overflowing. How do you make sure the stream is still useful when there is SO MUCH getting pushed into it? Vote Now

Social Network Interop (Open Standards)
Portable contacts, life streaming and various ‘Connect’ offerings have begun to break down the silos and walled gardens that are social networks. Come hear a panel of experts discuss some of the technologies, design issues and future direction of this trend. Vote Now

Securing Web Behemoths – Web Applications That Are Large (Security)
As the trend of ‘webifying’ continues, the smallness and simplicity of web applications will become a thing of the past. This raises the challenge of securing these web behemoths. An industry panel of Security engineering managers will discuss the approaches they use to secure their web behemoths. The attendees will gain awareness into the panelists’ security engineering programs & gain access to tools that they could apply at their companies. Vote Now

Our friends over at Bing have been busy coming up with panel ideas too, so if you have time, help out our favorite social networking torchbearers and vote up their panel ideas. They will appreciate it (and we’ll make sure they remember all that LiveSide love!).

Microsoft India - Windows Live Planet

Sunshine — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:50:12 GMT

One of our readers, nikhil_jain, pointed out Windows Live Planet. Curious me just had to investigate.

Windows live Planet is a social network from Microsoft India. It will help you find people with similar interests as you. You can also “Populate Your Planet” as they call it by importing contacts from the social networks that are connected to Windows Live (Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Hi5 and Tagged), just as you can on your Windows Live Profile.

The site also makes use of the Messenger Web Bar, so you can chat to your windows Live contacts without leaving the site. This social network apparently hasn’t gotten much publicity (outside of India) yet as most of the people registered there live in India. And yes, you can register there too if you are in another part of the World, just choose your country from the dropdown as you sign up.

What I wasn’t able to find out is how long this social network exists. I tried to find out yesterday, but the email I’ve sent to the Feedback address returned User Unknown. Another victim of the lay-off rounds?

Windows Live Planet - Disclaimer

In order to offer you a friend locator service and build your online profile, we will be requesting you to share demographic information, such as location, age, gender and other areas of preferences, interests and favourites. This demographic information in addition to the other profile details that we are collecting would be available for viewing by other signed in members of the friend locator service, and will be publicly available until the you delete your online profile from the friend locator. Based on your online profile, you might receive invitations from other signed in members to become friends.We urge you to be cautious about any personal contact information that you share to prevent misuse.

BuddyFuse, Connecting The Social

Sunshine — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:29:00 GMT

BuddyFuse, created by Dutch Computer Science student and former Microsoft Intern Yousef El-Dardiry, Jeroen Bransen and friends, integrates third party (social / IM) networks into Windows Live Messenger. By doing this you can chat with your friends on those social networks from Windows Live Messenger, so no need to go to these networks anymore just for a chat. Currently it is available in beta, only supporting the Dutch social network Hyves. They do plan on integrating other social networks too, like Facebook, Google Talk (GMail chat) and Twitter. An International release is also planned for 2009.

Installation is simple, install BuddyFuse, then start Messenger. You will notice there’s an extra option in the login screen. Once logged in you can control your Hyves Accounts from the button it added next to the mail icon above the contact list:

When you’ve added your account, all your Hyves contacts will be loaded into your buddylist and you can chat away…

(Please visit the site to view this media)

This sure is a nice addition to Windows Live, like an extension to the new activities that are coming to home.live (also includes Hyves). Personally I can’t wait for them to integrate Facebook. How about you? Interested and want to keep informed on when an International version is released? Fill out this small form, and they’ll keep you posted (email). You can also follow them on Twitter.

Microsoft partners with Facebook, Bebo, more to exchange contacts information securely using the Windows Live Contacts API

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

In a blog post this morning, John Richards, Director of Windows Live Platform at Microsoft, announces a set of new partnerships signed by Microsoft and 5 major social networks: Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged, and LinkedIn. From the blog post:

Starting today, we will be working with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn to exchange functionally-similar Contacts APIs, allowing us to create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services. Along with these collaborations, Microsoft is introducing a new website at www.invite2messenger.net that people can visit to invite their friends from our partner social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

So what does this mean? Currently, in order to populate a social network with information about your friends from say your Messenger buddies list or your Windows Live Hotmail account, you would need to provide your user info (email address) AND your password to the social network, which would then store in some fashion for some length of time that information as it logged into your mail or messenger account and imported your address book. Not an inherently safe operation, but that's the way it has been done. As an example, here's a screenshot of the current method for importing addresses into Tagged:

and the same for Bebo:

However now, using the Windows Live Contacts API beta in partnership with Microsoft, Bebo or Tagged (when it is implemented) or one of the other sites will instead take you to http://login.live.com, where you will log in, and permission will be granted for the site to gain access to your contacts. The site itself will never see your password. This functionality should be live today for Facebook and Bebo, with the others to follow along in the coming weeks and months. All of the contracts have been signed, it is just a matter of implementation on the sites' part, and their providing Microsoft with APIs for the export capabilities. Microsoft is apparently not done partnering, either. In a phone conversation with Richards today, he mentioned that these partnerships were with "5 of the 6" major social networks, and that there would be more to come. Will MySpace and others get on board? There certainly doesn't seem to be much downside.

The partnerships also allow for accessing your social networking contacts information, and moving it into your Windows Live Messenger contacts store. This action requires each networking site to provide Microsoft with APIs for gaining that information in a similar safe way. At launch today, only Facebook will have this functionality, but all of the services have agreed, and will be announcing availability in the coming months. By logging into www.invite2messenger.net, you will be presented with a list of services that you could import contact information from:

If this service looks familiar, we told you about an early version of it running in the Netherlands. That system allowed you to invite contacts from Windows Live Hotmail or Outlook, etc to your Messenger buddy list:

The Dutch site (www.invite2messenger.nl), basically a trial for the new site, was launched last November.

Richards also talked quite a bit about "dataportability" today. We've commented before on where Microsoft seems to be going with dataportability, and it does seem to be making an effort to promote safe secure use of not only its data, but the data of other social networks as well. Microsoft has taken a firm stance against "screen-scraping", and drilled in the necessity for security in dealing with contacts at a number of sessions at Mix08. While there might be some advantage to partnerships such as these being in effect promotions of the Windows Live services on other sites, the security gained by doing the right thing here is to be commended. Hopefully this kind of secure exchange of contact and other information catches on.