If you read Jeff Kunins' post a few weeks ago about the growth of Windows Live Messenger in the last decade, you already know that Messenger's growth has been pretty phenomenal. With such growth comes passionate feedback from customers, and a unique set of challenges around supporting those customers...

Hi, my name is Jeff Kunins, and I am the Group Program Manager (GPM) for social networking across Windows Live . In other words, I’m totally focused on partnering with and connecting to social networks and other web services that you already love, allowing them to light up Hotmail , Messenger , SkyDrive...

We continue to believe that one of the best ways to provide our customers with great Microsoft product experiences is to let them connect to the other apps, services, and devices that they love—getting richer, more powerful experiences in both. From bringing Facebook into Messenger to letting you send...

Frederic from ReadWriteWeb recently noted the large number of people who have connected Facebook and Messenger. As it’s now been about one month since we released Windows Live Essentials 2011 , we wanted to take a moment to talk more about our progress in building partnerships with Messenger that help...

Wanting privacy is not about needing something to hide. It’s about wanting to maintain control. Often, privacy isn't about hiding; it's about creating space to open up. If you remember that privacy is about maintaining a sense of control, you can understand why Privacy is Not Dead. There are good reasons...

As we look at usage patterns for people who use Windows Live Photos , Messenger , and other online services, we've seen the emergence of a broad pattern that has been shaping our thinking as we work on new versions of our products. What we see is an explosion of sharing – and of its natural consequence...

The first thing that comes to mind when you think of Windows Live Messenger is usually instant messaging – bouncing short text messages back and forth. But there are tons of things we've built into Messenger to make that experience more meaningful, and closer to a real face-to-face interaction. My name...

Engineering is a process, with trial and error, analysis, weighing of pros and cons, planning for the unexpected, and discovering unexpected issues along the way. It’s exciting precisely because we’re always learning as we go. I want to welcome you to our new blog, which is about just that: the engineering...

Over the last few months, we’ve focused this blog on our current software and services – how we build them and how they're used around the world. We’ve also talked about trends we’ve observed both in the use of our services and in our research with customers. Today marks the point where we shift the...

If you take a look through Dick Craddock’s blog post from earlier this year, A short history of Hotmail , or A peek behind the scenes at Hotmail , by Arthur de Haan , you’ll see that Hotmail has experienced enormous growth since it started 15 years ago. Today it delivers a service that is localized to...

Hi, my name is Dick Craddock and I’m the Group Program Manager for Windows Live Hotmail . “Group Program Manager” is just a fancy way of saying that I manage the team of Program Managers at Hotmail. We have the job of planning each Hotmail release and managing that release from beginning to end. We pick...

In this release of Windows Live, you can now see your friends’ activity in all the social networks you use. Last week, for example, Douglas Pearce blogged about what this means for the new Messenger. He discussed how Messenger Highlights is designed to be the most complete view of what your friends are...

On the Windows Live Hotmail team, we spend a lot of time talking to people about email. It’s one of the ways we figure out what people want, what their pain points are, and what we can build that might delight them. Even though we’re the most widely used email service in the world with over...

For over ten years now, instant messaging applications have shared a common user interface pattern – a slim window with your contact list in it that you can keep docked on the side of your screen. This makes it easy to keep the window open without taking up too much screen space. Because really, all...

Windows Live Messenger is both a powerful and fun communications tool for staying in touch with your friends, family and co-workers.  It is a semi-enclosed environment where you can freely interact with the people you know and trust – the people in your network. Unfortunately, over the last couple...