With the Windows Live Essentials 2011 reaching the RTM stage today and being made available publicly to Windows Vista and 7 users + Facebook Chat integration being rolled out to Australian users, it's time to prep your Windows Live IDs so that you can take advantage of these new features (especially in Messenger). Microsoft realised a few years ago that creating another social network would be a complete waste of time, money and resources because the public had already chosen the services they want and would stick with them (Facebook, Wordpress, Youtube, Digg etc). Accordingly, Microsoft decided to turn it's Windows Live service into a place that simply aggregated all the content from those other services into one place so that it is easier to keep a track of and then link that into it's extremely popular instant messaging and email services (Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail) to create a central social dashboard. For all this to work though, the user needs to link up these different social networks to their Windows Live ID in a process called "Connecting Services To Your Profile". Windows Live Messenger 2011 also uses more of the information from your Windows Live Profile & Contacts so therefore these need to be updated accordingly. Finally the the entire Windows Live ecosystem now has much improved privacy settings that are also probably worth checking out, to make sure that all of this information is going only to the people who you wish to see it.
What Are Services & What Extra Functionality Do They Provide To Messenger?
Services are simply other websites that you can link to your profile so that the site can update your friends on Messenger (or Hotmail) when you update or do something on that service and in a few cases, post information back to those services from Messenger and integrate your contact lists with other services. In this version of Windows Live Messenger, you can chat to your Facebook contacts on Facebook Chat via Windows Live Messenger. This is a much needed feature because Facebook Chat is woeful as many readers here know. The ability to continue to chat to those who wish to use Facebook Chat, but to do so using the same program you use to IM normally is just brilliant. To do this though, you need to connect your Facebook account to your Windows Live Profile, or as it's officially known 'add the Facebook service to your Profile'. This will cause all of your Facebook contacts to appear in your Windows Live Contact list, but they will be combined with your existing Messenger contacts, so that if you have someone as a contact on Messenger and a friend on Facebook, then you will only see one entry for them in your contact list. This process is done automatically, but if anyone is missed, you can manually combine them into one profile or if two people are incorrectly combined, you can separate them into two separate profiles too. Windows Live Messenger also displays a social feed in it's main window now and when you connect your profile, major items from your Facebook News Feed will be displayed in this feed. Optionally, you can also have any activities you perform on Facebook that cause things to be posted on your wall (uploading photos, status updates etc) to automatically posted into your Windows Live Profile feed so that your friends on Messenger will see it on their social feeds and also visa versa so that changes to your Messenger status are posted as status updates on your wall.
Adding Myspace and LinkedIn accounts to your profile also offer this same functionality that adding Facebook provides (without the chat part unfortunately). The rest of the services available for you to add offer a one way updating process. So although Messenger can not update those services and integrate contact lists like it can with Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn, it can still receive updates from sites such as Youtube (when you post a new video), Digg (when you digg an article) or Wordpress (when you update your blog). The missing service in here is Twitter but that should be appearing in the future apparently.
Connecting Services To Your Profile
So now you know what services are, you probably are interested in adding a few of them to your profile (most likely Facebook). It's really simple actually.
1. Open your web browser and go to http://profile.live.com/ and sign in with your Windows Live ID (your Hotmail/Messenger email address and password)
Windows Live Login
2. On the left of the page under Connected Services click the Connect link. This will bring you to a page with a stack of different website logos listed, some you'll know and heaps you will never have heard of in your life. Just click the name of the service you wish to connect to your profile.
Windows Live Profile
Windows Live Services
3. All you need to do now is follow the steps on the page. Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn require you to sign in with those services so that you can provide permission to Microsoft to access your profile so it can display the content in your feed. You can also select what you want shared between the networks from this screen as well. For the rest of the services, they typically just need your username (or URL for RSS feeds) and then the content will simply be fetched from their service and placed in your Windows Live Profile. If you follow the steps correctly and everything succeeds, you should be returned to the page with the list of different website logos with a tick next to the service you just added.
Two Way Updating Service
One Way Updating Service
4. Then just download the new Windows Live Essentials 2011 from http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials and sign into Messenger and if you added Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, you should now see those contacts listed in your contacts list with the appropriate contacts combined into one entry. You should also see your Social feed in the main window full of entries and updates.
Windows Live Messenger 2011
Updating Your Windows Live Profile & Contacts
As mentioned above the new Windows Live Messenger uses a lot more information from your profile than it used to. The single biggest change is that instead of setting a separate "Display Name" in Messenger, your display name is now your full name, similar to Facebook. This is a change that I personally love because some of the display names in the previous version were downright stupid, but it also means that unless your name is set correctly in your profile, then you're going to appear under the wrong name to your Messenger contacts. I believe that Windows XP users stuck on Windows Live Messenger 2009 will simply see your full name as your Display Name in their contact list when you sign into the new Messenger 2011 and that you won't see their Display Name that they set in Messenger 2009 unless you also sign into a Messenger 2009 machine. Also Personal Messages have been replaced with statuses in Messenger 2011, the main difference being is that it will cause it to be updated on your profile and also on Facebook, Myspace or LinkedIn if you enabled that functionality. Categories in your contact list (which appeared in the last update to Messenger) have additional functionality in this update as they are the basis of the new privacy settings (mentioned later in this article). So to update your profile and contacts you need to follow these steps:
1. Open your web browser and go to http://profile.live.com/ and sign in with your Windows Live ID (your Hotmail/Messenger email address and password)
Windows Live Login
2. Click Edit Details at the top of your social feed. You can then click Edit next to any of the info sections to edit the content within them. The majority of the fields in each info section can be left blank if you wish (so if you don't wish to add your address, then no problem). Remember with your name (which is a required field) that the name you choose is the name that appears in the From line from messages you send from Hotmail, so it's advisable that you just put your full name in there instead of something stupid like SpunkyMumma etc.
Windows Live Profile
3. To update your contact list go to http://contacts.live.com/ . From here you can tick contacts and then add them to new or existing categories and also combine 2 duplicate contacts by selecting the two entries that are duplicates and choosing Manage then Combine Contacts. To Separate a Contact then simply click it to display that contact's profile and then Manage then Separate This Contact.
Windows Live Contacts
Securing Your Profile With The New Privacy Settings
With the controversy Facebook has been in recently for their disregard to privacy by automatically opening parts of people's profiles to the public, Microsoft has been very careful to create a set of first class privacy settings. Used in conjunction with the contact categories, these settings are easy to set up and manage through one central hub. The use of sliders also makes it easy to see how much access is being given to each section of your profile comparatively to another section. There is also a new type of friend you can add. You can give a friend "Limited Access" to your profile, which only allows them access to certain more limited parts of your profile compared to other friends you have. This can often be useful for a probation period for people you've just met and are getting to know. To change these privacy settings follow these steps.
1. Open your web browser and go to http://profile.live.com/ and sign in with your Windows Live ID (your Hotmail/Messenger email address and password)
Windows Live Login
2. Click Privacy Settings at the top of your social feed to display the Privacy Options screen. You can also access this page at any time by clicking your name in the top right corner of a Windows Live service and choosing Privacy Settings. All of the privacy settings for any of the Windows Live services are available here. There are 4 settings Everyone, Limited, Private and Custom for those who want to set their own options. Each of the options are self explanatory and so just pick the one you want and click Save and the settings are applied immediately.
Windows Live Profile
3. If you choose to pick your own custom privacy settings, then visit the Advanced Privacy options page to modify any of the settings you choose. This is done by dragging sliders to different notches, with the far right being public and the far left being only you can see it.
Basic Privacy Settings
Advanced Privacy Settings
Once you look through all these settings your profile is now ready to take full advantage of the Windows Live Essentials 2011. You can read more about them in the review on this website, but they're very functional pieces of software that make keeping your social life together online that bit easier.
