There's been a lot of talk over the last few months about the idea of
data portability. Because let's face it, as useful as services like Facebook, Plaxo, and LinkedIn can be, the last thing you want to do when signing up for a new service is enter a few hundred names and email addresses that you've already entered somewhere else.
Many services will do a decent job of importing your contacts from another application, say Gmail. But there's no universal standard, which means that there could be some information missing, or if you have a LinkedIn contact that's not in your Google address book, how do you import them into your Facebook account?
Microsoft this week
announced partnerships with LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo, and Facebook. Each company has agreed to let users import their contacts using the Windows Live contacts API.
At first glance, the last company we would have expected to propose an answer is Microsoft. The company has a long history of trying to lock users into its own software and services. But the more we think about it, the more it makes sense. Microsoft has also launched
Invite2Messenger, a service that makes it easier to invite members of each social network to be your Windows Live Messenger contacts. In other words, if you don't have a strong social network of your own to promote, why not partner with a bunch of popular services in an effort to promote an area where you're already strong: instant messaging.
[via
WebWare]
Computerworld
