Bowing to the inevitable, Microsoft took a big step today towards data portability by announcing that Windows Live contacts can now be exported to social networks and other Websites. Its Windows Live Contacts API will work with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Taged, and LinkedIn to start. Members of those social networks will be able to import their Windows Live contacts (i.e., their Hotmail address book) so that they can more easily find or invite those people into their social networks. Microsoft is also launching a site, Invite2Messenger, for importing social networking contacts into Windows Live. Right now that only works with Facebook.
Although Microsoft is part of the Data Portability Workgroup, this is a separate effort, confirms a spokesperson. So much for industry standards. But this is an important step in allowing people to take their contacts with them no matter where they reside, whether in their email or social networks. Instead of startups scraping Hotmail to ingest contacts, now they have a legitimate way of doing so.
In a way, this is a bit of a catch-up move. You can already import contacts easily from Gmail into services such as Facebook, Friendfeed and others. Maybe Microsoft had a touch of Gmail envy or were concerned about being left behind. At a certain point, an email service that doesn’t let you export your contacts could really be a damper on your social life elsewhere on the Web.
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They finally saw the writing on the wall.
Being too self absorbed just isn’t going to make it in this Web 2.0 Social era
They keep on trying. I am not sure why, but trying is all they know.
jay i am hot
A giant step forward.. no need to muck with ugly data scraping anymore.
nice touch, next step outlook.
It will be interesting if MSFT starts pushing core services like Office or Exchange out to social networks.
Well, the more open the better … for meta application developers.
Interesting they are just deciding to do this now. It seems that Microsoft has an old school mentality…never wanting to truly adapt to the new ideas that it must in order to evolve and keep up with the others.
Hmmm….I can do this already even without the Dataportability partnership. This is more of a PR move than anything. More like, Lets go to work people, there is nothing to see here.
Hold on, don’t the other sites just scrape GMail contacts. This is a real API, no?
@Craig Not really, you can’t. I don’t know about other services, but LinkedIn now has a captcha for exporting your contact list in CSV, which many other websites were using to “import” new users. You can still get the contact list via screen scraping, but without email addresses, so creating a good “user importer” from LinkedIn has become (almost) impossible.
Interesting is the fact that so far users data was the most guarded possession of most websites. First Gmail, and now Microsoft with their groupies are giving away their contacts. Heart change?
Gmail does not let you do this.
When I go to friend finder in Facebook, I have to enter my gmail password. When I choose hotmail, I don’t have to enter my password, but am directed to the ms sign in page. Microsoft is actually leading the way here, not playing catch up. wow.
Datrio,
When using the APIs, you do have to authenticate. I can’t just go snag your contacts without your consent. I’m currently looking at the GMail Contacts API and it’s pretty secure - the user has to grant the site permission to their contacts.
Speaking of this whole contact sharing stuff - anyone have recommendations for pre-written modules that do this for you? I hate reinventing the wheel!
Thanks
data portability = downloadable xml document with social annotation… “portable” is key… having to enter your facebook password on windows live is not very good move towards Data Portability… it’s MS trying to pull the wool over our eyes and hope we “Accept” that this is some huge leap forward for them in terms of portability… it’s not.
web 2.0 services left and right have no problem letting you “invite” contacts from other services to their own… and vice versa. This is not Data Portability… we don’t need to let them adopt, redefine, and proverbially pillage yet another effort by the people for absolute control of their own information. Boo MS. Show some REAL effort for a change, till then, i’m done assuming you give even a percentage of a percentage of a shit about Data Portability. Google, same goes to you. Yahoo… keep up the good work, little by little you are getting there (become an OpenID accepting party and we’ll talk about “leaps and bounds”).
>>In a way, this is a bit of a catch-up move. You can already import contacts easily from Gmail into services such as Facebook, Friendfeed and others.
Didn’t Google only roll out their Contacts API within the last month or so? Before that you had to give up your credentials…so Microsoft’s not far behind Google on this one.
I dug it up…the Google Contact API has only been out for 20 days:
http://googledataapis.blogspot.....anded.html
>You can already import contacts easily from Gmail into services such as Facebook, Friendfeed and others.
Erick,
Are any of those sites using the Gmail contacts API or are they using the password anti-pattern and collecting username + password from users then screen scraping these sites?
Web 3.0 is here. interapp communication.
These emerging developments are important. The Data Sharing Workshop and Summit in April and May will be a great opportunity to get in the room with a range of players big and small and see where the collaborative - energy around data movement goes.
Although this was an independent move by Microsoft, it will go a long way to aligning their platform with the ultimate recommendations of the DataPortability project.
John Richards and others have shown a strong level of support to the project. By referencing the project in the press release it shows that they understand this is a small step towards the ultimate DataPotability goal.
I’ve posted some comments on my blog as well: http://chrissaad.wordpress.com.....rtability/
Contacts sharing between social networks is important but , I think that cross site messaging is mach more important , for example send a massage from my Gmail to a facebook or Linkedin contact.
The upcoming new version of our social people search engine will enable users to contact users from different social networks , directly from our site.
Lizi,
http://www.copenda.com
The implementation kinda sucks…
Although this was an independent move by Microsoft, it will go a long way to aligning their platform with the ultimate recommendations of the DataPortability project.
John Richards and others have shown a strong level of support to the project. By referencing the project in the press release it shows that they understand this is a small step towards the ultimate DataPotability goal.