Microsoft teams up with 5 social networks for contact lists portability

As part of the its commitment to data portability, Microsoft Live has teamed up with 5 top social networks to facilitate and make it easier for members of those social networks who are also using the Windows Live Messenger to import their address book from their social networking profiles into the Windows Live contacts list.

Using Windows Live Contacts API, members of Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, Tagged and Hi5 can logged in to these social networks and see which of their friends are using the Windows Live Contacts API. LinkedIn, Tagged and Hi5 users will have to wait a little while though as it is currently available for Facebook and Bebo users only.

Related to this, Microsoft has also launched Invite2Messenger. A new facility residing in Windows Live portal which users can use to invite their social network friends to join them in Windows Live Messenger. These two new Microsoft initiatives are aimed at facilitating cross platform communication through one common gateway which is Windows Live Messenger. And for Microsoft, it is a good promotional tool for the Windows Live Messenger.

However good the intention of Microsoft in teaming up with these 5 top social networks, we can’t help but think of a similar initiative taken by Microsoft rival’s Google which was spearheading the OpenSocial Movement. The OpenSocial Movement brought together various social networks which have opened up their platforms to third party developers and to one another making it easier to work on better and useful applications that can be used in all the social networks. Ironically both Microsoft and Facebook were not part of Google’s OpenSocial Movement. And we couldn’t help but think this could all be part of a grand scheme, on the part of Microsoft to create its own OpenSocial group that would rival that of Google’s.

Via [On10]