This morning I received an invitation from a couple of people I know to join another social network. I am already a member of LinkedIn (my favorite), Facebook, Plaxo and who knows what other sites. So here was another social network that I would have to join and manage, oh joy. Well I was very surprised to see it was Windows Live that was providing this service. Microsoft has over 460 million Live ids currently which is probably larger than most of the social networking sites combined, although I have no figures to back that up. I must say that it seems a little late to be adding this functionality to Windows Live, but it makes perfect sense. I suspect that people who would never care about a social networking site, will create a network now that it is part of something they already use.
Of course, as is the case with most social networking sites, I nurture one and let the rest get old. So my LinkedIn profile is kept up to date and I just accept connections on the rest. Microsoft is already planning to add support to integrate your Windows Live network with other social networking sites. All I have heard of so far is the ability to update your status message on these sites, which is of minimal interest to me. What I want is to be on my social networking site and connect with people on other social networking sites without having to manage everything separately. I can dream. Well, at the very least check out what they are doing on Windows Live, it sounds like things are going to be rolling out little by little over the coming weeks.
