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.

AOL announced its intention to purchase social networking site Bebo for $850 million making many wonder what exactly was Microsoft thinking buying a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million. Using some advanced math skills, that puts the suspected value of Facebook at $15 billion. But is that fair?

I must confess to being surprised by the Computing Which? magazine’s finding that Bebo is better than Facebook and MySpace for a number of factors, including ease of set up. I am not surprised by MySpace, I don’t think anybody actually thinks it is designed well or easy to use, but Facebook seems to the most frequently quoted so I just sort of assumed that it would be seen as the best. So much for assumptions…