Last night we announced the world what my organization has been working on for the past year. It’s really exciting to see all the press in the past 24 hours.
So now that we’ve announced to the world here is what I’ve been working on (with my team) over the past year:
- Windows Live People - A unified contact list to help manage all your contacts across all of Windows Live
- Web Messenger integrated into Hotmail + People
- What’s new integrated into Hotmail (when you send an email)
- Unified Contact Picker and Auto complete controls for Windows Live
- Friends List control that you see on the Profile page and the corresponding page when you click “View more” to browse your Friends’ Network
- A whole bunch of cross team backend stuff to make this all work
LiveSide, as usual, has a great overview of Windows Live People. Go read it so I don’t have to write about it 
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“Overall we really like the changes that have been made with the contact management, with the execution of the improvements being good too. Its simple, but effective.”
The NYTimes also has a great write up with a title that caught my eye! Microsoft Beats Yahoo and Google to Social Inbox 2.0
“Exactly one year ago, I wrote about the race between Yahoo and Google to turn their e-mail and instant message systems into something closer to social networks. Both companies figured it was futile to take on Facebook and MySpace directly. So they rushed to develop new ways for their users to trade news, photos and so on with the people already in their address books and buddy lists.
The winner of that race is…Microsoft.”
And for those of you who pay attention to how Microsoft is organized and led, here is the money quote.
Microsoft takes a lot of heat, much of it deserved, for its plodding nature and overly complex software. Since the services haven’t been introduced yet, I can’t tell how well these new Windows Live features work. But the fact that the company is the first to actually introduce social networking features to its e-mail is a sign of Microsoft’s discipline, or maybe the lack of resolve at Google and Yahoo. Or both.
Two words. Steven Sinofsky. Windows 7 and Windows Live will be just a piece of his legacy.
And on a personal note, I have to say that this past year working on Windows Live has been the most rewarding and fulfilling experience in my almost 10 years at Microsoft. I worked with a world class team to stitch together disparate services and bring some real value to our customers. I view Wave 3 as the beginning and Wave 1 and 2 as foundational releases for Windows Live. What we plan to do has me even more excited.
I’ve also learned a tremendous amount from our leadership team and my peers. Special thanks goes to them for creating an amazing organization that I’m proud to work in.