Today we are announcing availability of Messenger Connect () beta. Messenger Connect allows users to communicate, share, and connect with their Messenger friends on other websites. It is a flexible, yet prescriptive set of APIs to help create intuitive experiences that can be tightly integrated into a website or another app. Windows Live users Messenger, Hotmail, and SkyDrive users can opt in to provide access to their identity (sign-in, profile, relationships, and additional user data), share updates about the things they’ve done via Messenger social, and chat with their friends, all from within the experience of another website or app.

The unique value of ”connect like” products for web sites and apps isn’t in the technology (read all about the glue), but rather in the audience that can be reached and user connections that can be made. Hundreds of millions of people will be able to connect what they do on their favorite websites with the new Windows Live user experiences – the new Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger (+iPhone), SkyDrive for your photos and Office docs, and the new Essentials beta - all great new experiences that Messenger Connect now enables partner websites to connect to.

What you can use Messenger Connect for

Messenger Connect enables three core scenarios for websites and app developers:

• Identity – makes it easy for users to sign in and sign up to your web site using their Windows Live ID
• Social distribution – lets users share the things they do on your website with their friends. Activities appear in Messenger, Hotmail, and across Windows Live properties, and other places Messenger social is displayed (including Windows Phone 7 and the very popular Windows Live Messenger iPhone app)
• Realtime shared experiences – lets users share an experience in real time with their friends

What's new in Messenger Connect

Many of the components that have evolved into Messenger Connect have been around for several years (Messenger Web Toolkit, Live ID Web Authentication, Delegated Authentication, and the Windows Live Contacts API), but this is the first time we’ve delivered a suite of standards-based, self-service APIs as a package. To understand how Messenger Connect works, from authorization, to the different interfaces and controls, to the emerging standards/specifications we use (OAuth WRAP, Portable Contacts, ActivityStrea.ms, and OData), check out this post.

Below are some screenshots from a website that is using Messenger Connect through a Gigya integration:

Working with the industry

Over the past few months we've worked closely with industry leaders from a technology, policy and scenario perspective. The feedback we received from these partners has been critical in the development of Messenger Connect – it has directly helped shape our development so far, and your feedback can help shape our development in the future.

Over the next couple of months, as we expand the beta, you will see many more partner sites go live.

Getting access and the future

Messenger Connect is now open in beta form to any developer or website for the core scenarios outlined above (more info). We're working hard to deliver additional scenarios, and will ship a final release later on this year. You can get more info here and if you have feedback, check out this forum post. Also – be sure to subscribe to the Windows Live for Developers Blog – that is where we’ll be posting lots of developer and user experience related details about Messenger Connect.