Microsoft Live Goes Social

It's been a busy week for the world's three largest web portals. First we had Google adding voice and video chat to Gmail, then we had Yahoo testing a brand new front page, and now we have Microsoft adding social features to their Microsoft Live service.

With Yahoo and Google already adding social features to their portals, this is a little bit of catch up on the part of Microsoft, but it is definitely good news for Live users who will get some really nice aggregated features. The update will include a photo sharing service, integration with Hotmail and Messenger, and will support a host of third-party sites like Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, WordPress and many others.

The new Microsoft Live will also see an upgrade to the profiles, Live Groups, and SkyDrive storage space bumped from 5GB to 25GB. This is a significant upgrade on the part of Microsoft and we should expect to see Live become the central point for new online applications being rolled out by Microsoft and increased integration with other sites like Digg.