Digital Home Thoughts: Major Updates to Windows Live Suite

"Microsoft just announced the availability of a number of new and updated online applications in its Windows Live suite: Windows Live Photos, Profiles, People, and Groups. In addition, Microsoft also announced that it will allow its users to integrate content from a large number third-party services, including Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, Twitter, and Yelp. Microsoft will begin rolling out these new services to U.S. customers in the coming weeks and expects them to be available globally in 54 countries by early 2009."

Starting to look a lot like Facebook. They are pretty wise to allow integration of third party services, but again, something Facebook already has. This is clearly going to be an uphill battle, as most people go to a social networking site that their friends are already on. Speaking from personal experience, I only started using Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal as a result of my friends already using them. Hopefully the competition will bring innovation. I'd like to see them possibly integrate their social networking effort with the Xbox and Zune, then we could really see a deal changer.