James Senior's Blog

There’s no denying the popularity of plug and play social building blocks. Websites love to acquire new people and this is why it makes sense to use the toolkits provided by the likes of Facebook, Windows Live, JS-Kit, Disqus et al. All these kits make it easy to use “digital word of mouth” and give you a large social megaphone with which to attract new visitors and land your message or brand. In this post I’ll discuss how choice is the silver bullet and how combining the strength of Facebook Connect and Windows Live Messenger Library provides people with options they really want.

Backgrounder

One of the pioneers in this space was Facebook who launched their Facebook Connect service which gave websites the ability to tap into a visitor’s social graph on Facebook with relative ease. Once a website had access to a user’s Facebook account they could ship data to and from Facebook, pulling in things like Facebook profile picture and their name whilst also allowing a website to publish a user’s actions into their news feed on Facebook thus encouraging new user acquisition and retention. An example of Facebook Connect integration can be seen on Techcrunch.com.

The Windows Live Messenger team recently launched the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, which provides a collection of widgets and controls that make it simple for a website to get data to and from Windows Live. This data includes profile picture, name etc. and allows people to strike up instant messenger conversations with contacts and other people on the website who are probably not on the website at the time. This behavior encourages new user acquisition and provides a more engaging experience that retains the focus of people for a longer period of time. An example of the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit can be seen on PhotoBucket.com.

Other services like Disqus also provide ways to unify login experiences and spread content across the web but in a specific channel of feedback engines on blogs and user-generated content websites.

The Analysis

Let’s break down what Facebook Connect and Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit provide for developers:

Both Facebook Connect and Messenger Web Toolkit provide excellent vehicles with which content publishers can reach new audiences. Facebook Connect’s strength lies in the way you can insert text and links into a feed providing a passive announcement into a user’s social circle. I liken this to a shotgun approach that relies on people to be at the right place at the right time to be hit by the information in their feed whilst they are on the Facebook website.

In contrast, the strength of Messenger Web Toolkit lies in its ability to reach out to both individuals and groups of friends from the web to a service which spans not only the web but a world of clients running on Windows, Mac, Xbox and Windows Mobile. As well as targeting communication via an application that is always running in the background, this approach is much more laser targeted because sharing of content occurs to specific groups or individuals whom the user identifies as already being interested in the shared content.

Which approach should content publishers take – Facebook or Windows Live? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, simply that it depends on what makes sense for the individual website and the kind of interaction they are trying to drive. With Facebook’s 200m active users and Windows Live Messenger’s 330m users it makes sense to hit as many people as possible with both the shotgun and the laser, or in other words using both social networks. This way you put the choice in the hands of the people and allow them to engage their friends how they see fit.