[Share] Messenger Highlights - the best of what your friends are doing across the web

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Messenger Highlights - the best of what your friends are doing across the web
Jul
19
20
10

by Douglas Pearce
4 
Over the past few weeks, we've announced many new features coming in Windows Live Messenger. By now you've probably played with the Beta, and if you haven't, you can get it now at http://explore.live.com. You can also see how Messenger goes with you wherever you are -- on the new Hotmail or even using Messenger for iPhone. 

One of the first things you'll see in each of these experiences is a feed of social updates from your friends, labeled Highlights. On your PC Highlights appears in the expanded window when you are running the new Messenger in full view. Today we want to share the thinking behind the Highlights feed and how we bring together the most interesting view of all of the things that your contacts are up to across the web while keeping clutter away to make sure that you don't miss any of what your friends are doing… wherever they're doing it.



What you'll see in Highlights
We know most people use at least one social network and that many people participate in multiple content sharing sites. And, of course, everyone still get tons of social content like photos and social notifications in email. Our approach with Messenger wasn't to build yet another social network or sharing site, but rather to connect you to the sites you and your friends already use. Highlights is designed to be the most complete view of what your friends are doing across the web. We do this by bringing together everything your friends are sharing like status on IM, updates on social networks, updates from content sharing sites, email updates from your friends, and documents on SkyDrive. If you haven’t already, you can connect your services to Messenger now at http://profile.live.com/services/. 



Now let's look at a few examples of what these updates look like: 

Updates from Social Networks you use
Here's an update from a Facebook friend. The photos look great in Messenger, and clicking them opens a full-screen slideshow. Of course, you can also see recent comments from Facebook friends, and your comments go back to Facebook, too. You can also connect to MySpace, and LinkedIn is coming soon. 




Highlights from social emails like photos and Facebook updates
Today, more than ever, people share a lot of content in email, especially photos. One of the things you'll see in Highlights is large previews of ordinary photo attachments from your friends. This isn't limited to emails from other Hotmail users. If you get an email with photos from a friend who uses Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, that will look great in Messenger, too. 



Web Activities like YouTube and Flickr
When you or your friends connect services like Flickr and YouTube, you can see each other’s updates in Highlights. The list of services you can connect is available at http://profile.live.com/services/. Here are two examples, a YouTube video and a Flickr photo.





Office Documents on SkyDrive
SkyDrive hosts your Office Documents and is great for easily sharing and collaborating on documents with your friends. You'll see new and updated documents in Highlights, too.



Richer connections with the people you care most about
Until now we've been talking about what goes into Highlights to make the experience complete, and that's important because it puts people—and not just the services they use—first. Instead of navigating to several websites and having to dig through your email to know what's happening with your friends, you can just look at one place where people are at the center. 

But if all we did was aggregate all this activity, we'd make information overload worse, not better. Instead, we do two more important things: we prioritize updates from the people who matter most to you, and we favor the most interesting things your friends are doing, so things like photos, videos, and the updates people are talking about rise to the top. 

Let's break it down. First and foremost, we optimize for the people who matter most, and we do that with Favorites. It just takes a click to add a Favorite, and once you do, your Favorites get special treatment throughout Messenger -- you get quick access to them in the Windows 7 task bar, their presence is shown at the top of your Friends list, and of course, we keep their updates in Highlights longer and show them higher in the feed so you don't miss what these friends are doing. 



Next, we take your friends’ activities and rank them across several factors:

  1.. How many comments does the update have? 
  2.. What type of update is it? 
  3.. How recent is the update?
Then we take the results and show the updates in Highlights in two columns – one for updates like status messages and links and the other for media like photos and videos. You can see the media column outlined in this picture – this design lets the photos and videos stand out while saving plenty of room for text and links on the left. 



If you want to pull back the curtain just a bit more, here’s a diagram of how you can expect your Highlights view to look: 



The end result is a Highlights feed that shows you:

  a.. More updates from your Favorites for longer 
  b.. Other interesting stuff that your friends are talking about 
  c.. Less of what you probably aren’t interested in
Bringing it all together
Thanks for taking the time to explore how Highlights brings together the most interesting updates from all your friends across the web while making sure you don't miss updates from the people who matter most. Try it out for yourself and let us know what you think – we hope you find us a great companion to the social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and (soon) LinkedIn that you’re already using.

Doug Pearce – Lead Program Manager, Windows Live

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