Windows Live Groups
Encyclopedia
Windows Live Groups is an online service by Microsoft
as part of its Windows Live
range of services that enable users to create their social groups for sharing, discussion and coordination.
function, allowing members of the group to participate in group discussions. In addition, Windows Live Groups integrates with the following Windows Live services to provide collaboration and sharing features:
The owner of the group can choose a group theme, message and a picture. They can also delete the group, manage who joins the group etc.
, a similar offering from Microsoft, has been discontinued on/after February 21, 2009. However, contents from MSN Groups could not be migrated over to Windows Live Groups, due to the different focus between the two products. The Windows Live Groups service is optimized for small groups like clubs or families, whereas MSN Groups caters to a wide variety of group sizes and types, including large public groups. Windows Live Groups was updated to the "Wave 4" release on June 7, 2010.
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
as part of its Windows Live
Windows Live
Windows Live is the collective brand name for a set of services and software products from Microsoft, part of their software plus services platform. A majority of these services are Web applications, accessible from a browser, but there are also client-side binary applications that require...
range of services that enable users to create their social groups for sharing, discussion and coordination.
Features
The service allows users to form their own community groups, similar to the way Facebook GroupsFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
function, allowing members of the group to participate in group discussions. In addition, Windows Live Groups integrates with the following Windows Live services to provide collaboration and sharing features:
- Windows Live Hotmail Calendar provides a group calendar function which allows all members of the Group to add or keep track of calendar events for their Group
- Windows Live MessengerWindows Live MessengerWindows Live Messenger is an instant messaging client created by Microsoft that is currently designed to work with Windows XP , Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, Xbox 360, Blackberry OS, iOS, Java ME, S60 on Symbian OS 9.x and Zune HD...
allow users to create Groups (not to be confused with "categories" in Messenger) in their contact list and start conversations with these Groups - Windows Live SkyDriveWindows Live SkyDriveWindows Live SkyDrive, initially called Windows Live Folders, is a free-of-charge file hosting service that allows users to upload files to a cloud storage and then access them from a Web browser...
provides members of the Group 5GBGigabyteThe gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
of storage to upload and share their files and documents for others in the Group to download - Windows Live Photos allow members of the Group to upload and share their photos with each other
- Windows Live Hotmail provides users to send mass group e-mail messages to all members of a particular Group they are part of.
- Windows Live Office provides users with access to the Office Web Apps, and it uses the group's SkyDrive storage.
- Windows Live Family Safety blocks the use of Windows Live Groups for child managed accounts.
The owner of the group can choose a group theme, message and a picture. They can also delete the group, manage who joins the group etc.
History
Windows Live Groups was released on December 2, 2008. MSN GroupsMSN Groups
MSN Groups was a website part of the MSN network which hosted online communities, and which contained Web pages, hosted images, and contained a message board...
, a similar offering from Microsoft, has been discontinued on/after February 21, 2009. However, contents from MSN Groups could not be migrated over to Windows Live Groups, due to the different focus between the two products. The Windows Live Groups service is optimized for small groups like clubs or families, whereas MSN Groups caters to a wide variety of group sizes and types, including large public groups. Windows Live Groups was updated to the "Wave 4" release on June 7, 2010.
See also
- Federated Media's BigTent Groups
- Google GroupsGoogle GroupsGoogle Groups is a service from Google Inc. that supports discussion groups, including many Usenet newsgroups, based on common interests. The service was started in 1995 as Deja News, and was transitioned to Google Groups after a February 2001 buyout....
- Windows LiveWindows LiveWindows Live is the collective brand name for a set of services and software products from Microsoft, part of their software plus services platform. A majority of these services are Web applications, accessible from a browser, but there are also client-side binary applications that require...
- Yahoo! GroupsYahoo! GroupsYahoo! Groups is one of the world’s largest collections of online discussion boards. The term Groups refers to Internet communication which is a hybrid between an electronic mailing list and a threaded Internet forum, in other words, Group messages can be read and posted by e-mail or on the Group's...