The new Windows Live lets you pull in contacts from a whole range of social networks and services such as Facebook and LinkedIn, making it easier to tie all those loose ends of your online life together.
With more than 60 social networks and online services on board as partners, the new Windows Live offers a unique way for you to stay on top of your life online. So far we've looked at how you can do things like set up your "Web Activities" feed to alert all of your Windows Live contacts about what you've been doing online.
We've also had a peek at the "What's New" feed, the Windows Live feature that allows you to see what your friends have been doing around the Web.
So why is it important for you to import your contacts across to Windows Live? Because the features we've mentioned above rely on reciprocal contacts, which means you'll only get to see updates in your "What's New" feed from those Facebook friends, for example, who are also your Windows Live contacts.
Likewise, if you want to receive someone's Twitter updates in your "What's New" feed, not only do you have to be following them on that service, but you also have to add them as a Windows Live contact.
This has to be done manually across most of our partner networks at this point in time. But an automated contact importing feature has been set up for two of our biggest partners: Facebook and LinkedIn. And you'll be able to import MySpace friends in the not too distant future.
So rather than starting from scratch and building up an entirely new contact list, now you can safely and securely invite your contacts directly to Windows Live from one of these four other social networks.
Here's how to do it
Start off by going to your Windows Live home page and clicking on the "Add people" link to the right of your Hotmail previews.
Then select the network or partner service you would like to import contacts from and click on the blue arrow next to the drop-down menu.
You will be redirected to a sign-in page for that network or service, where you will need to enter in your relevant account details.
After logging in, you'll go straight back to Windows Live, where you can choose the contacts from the network — in this example, Facebook — that you want to add to Windows Live. The first menu will prompt you to choose those contacts that already have a Windows Live ID. The people you choose from this list will automatically be added to your Windows Live contacts.
A list of all your Facebook — or other network — contacts will appear in Windows Live, you can choose whether to bring across everyone or just go through and select the friends you want to share with Windows Live.
The next step prompts you to invite your friends who don't have Windows Live IDs to sign-up, so you can see what they've been up to online and vice versa.
Once you've chosen the people you want to add automatically as Windows Live contacts and who you'd like to invite to sign-up to Windows Live, you'll see a menu that allows you to personalise those invitations you'll be sending out to people who you've asked to join.
There you have it. Your invitations have been sent and your Facebook friends who already use Windows Live have been added automatically to your Windows Live contacts.
Here's a video from the Windows Live team going through all the steps.
Had a chance to pull over any contacts from your another networks yet? Let us know how it went below.
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