Digital Home Thoughts: Windows Live Welcomes You to the Social

"Depending on the program and what services you connect to your Windows Live account, you can share what you've been doing on other web sites, see friends and updates, or share your Windows Live activity. We'd recommended you manage your services on the Windows Live account page, where you can get a better idea of all the accounts you're connecting, since connecting to your accounts from within the apps is somewhat cumbersome."

Microsoft may have failed to become the only go to place for social networking, but they are trying to make sure that you can keep up to date with all the different options available. And when you are not finding out who ate what for dinner, the rest of Windows Live Essentials provides a lot of other useful tools. Overall, I have found that the Windows Live Essentials is a pretty good toolkit that adds to the whole Windows experience and is probably Microsoft's answer to Apple's iLife and Google's ever growing lab of beta programs.