One of the coolest things about the new Windows Live are the new “Web activities.” On your homepage, you’ll see a stream of updates from your friends under the heading “What’s New With Your Network.” Out of the box, that’s going to include your activities across Windows Live (new photos, new blog posts, etc.), but by adding “Web Activities” to this stream, you can share what you’re doing across the social web, too. So, how do you do this?
It’s actually really easy. From your homepage, there’s a link on the top right to add new web activities – just click on that. You can also access this option from your Profile page (click “Profile” from the main navigation bar that is found at the top of all the Windows Live services.
After you click on the link to add activities, you’re taken to a page where the web activities are listed. Here, you’ll find web activities like Twitter, flickr, StumbleUpon, iLike, Pandora, Photobucket, WordPress, Yelp, and others. You can also add an RSS feed of your choosing from the activity called “Custom Blog.”
By the way, social web enthusiasts, here’s a tip for you: just because it says “Custom Blog,” that doesn’t mean you have to add an actual blog. If you’re not a blogger, you can add any feed of yours that you want to share. For example, if you’re a heavy FriendFeed user, you can add a feed of all the messages that you post into FriendFeed directly. I wouldn’t add your main FriendFeed feed because that would lead to duplicate entries if you also add other Web Activities like Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc. Instead, you’ll want to grab the feed for just the items you post manually into FriendFeed (or share via the FriendFeed bookmarklet). The format for this RSS feed is as follows:
http://friendfeed.com/username?service=internal&format=atom
Anyway, that’s all you have to do to add activities – it’s really simple.
Permissions!
However, it’s worth noting that when you do add activities, you have the choice to customize how they are displayed. You can choose to not include them in the “What’s New” list by unchecking the box provided. You can also set permissions very granularly by choosing from the settings in the “Share With” drop-down box. Here, you can choose to share the activity with “everyone,” meaning they are public to the world; share with “my network,” meaning just the people you’ve added to your Windows Live network; or share with “Just Me,” meaning you want them to be private.
You can also choose to share your activities with certain people only by choosing the option “Select People.” If you choose that setting, you’ll be presented with further options that let you select a category of friends to share with (if you’ve organized your friends by category) or even individuals. You can pick out individuals by entering in a name or email address or by clicking the link to select them from your contact list. These additional options won’t display on the main page unless you click on the “Select People” option. That keeps the main page uncluttered and less confusing for those who aren’t interested in configuring permissions.
When you’re finished customized permissions (assuming you choose to do so), all you need to do is click “Save” and you’re done!
