For users of the Web, being able to connect to friends and build social networks is becoming more important every day. Today, we are releasing the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit--a set of controls and libraries that enable you to connect Windows Live Messenger users and their friends with users of your Web site.

 See a video demonstration.

Windows Live Messenger is the most used instant messaging services world wide, with more than 320 million monthly active accounts in over 50 countries and in 36 languages.

For Web site owners

The Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit provides Web sites with three core benefits:

1. User acquisition: Your Web site visitors can help you build your audience on the fly by inviting their friends to your site through instant messaging.
2. Deeper engagement: The toolkit allows people on your Web site to easily chat with their Messenger friends or others on your site, keeping them their longer.
3. Return traffic: Bringing people back to your Web site is difficult when the only weapon in your arsenal is email. Using Messenger functionality you can break through the inbox chatter and remind people why your service is so great.

For the people

The Windows Live Messenger Web toolkit provides these key benefits to your users:

1. See your friends in more places: Sometimes using a new web site is a lonely experience. You want to go where everybody knows your name, or at least you want to be able to find your friends. The toolkit allows your users to easily find their friends who already use the site, or connect with existing friends and bring them to the party.
2. Meet new people and choose if you want to stay connected to them: Want to connect with others who share a common interest? Discover and connect with someone who is watching the same videos or commenting on the same content. Be discovered and contacted by someone who lives in the same town or likes the same music. Earn yourself a new friend.
3. Express yourself across the web: Windows Live Messenger users invest a lot of time changing their status messages, display pictures and display name to reflect their mood. Now, this personal expression can be shared with others on your Web site.

Show me the bits

Web developers can choose the level of customization by using the pre-built and skinnable Web Bar control, using the 16 modular UI Controls, or building the entire experience from the ground up using the Windows Live Messenger Library.

We have many cool samples in multiple languages (C#, VB.NET, PHP, Ruby, Java, Python and Perl) that show you how simple it is to integrate the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit. So, no matter what your style, you’ve got the help you need to kick start your development and get these new capabilities on your Web site in a snap.

Getting started

The easiest way to begin is to use this tool, which provides a step-by-step guide and sample code to get you started.

For people familiar with the Windows Live Messenger Library

We’ve heard from developers that they “want to control the entire experience, just give us APIs and we’ll build it”. To provide the best experience for everyone using Windows Live Messenger there is a certain baseline of functionality that needs to exist. Building this functionality was a lot of effort and while some great implementations were built, most developers felt the effort required was a lot so they asked for tools to make it easier for them to develop faster.

We decided to deliver a set of 16 JavaScript/HTML controls that can be skinned using CSS and extended using the Windows Live Messenger Library. These controls make it very fast for Web developers to let their users connect and share with their friends no matter where they are.

From v1 to v2.5 we also got some great feature requests and we have delivered a bunch of these, included:

• Automatic Sign In: Once a user opts into using Messenger on the site by using the “softer” opt-in screen, they can be automatically signed in by the Web site even if they use a different PC.
• Cross page state - you can now use this on content portals where users click between pages without losing their signed in status.
• Performance – the web based performance has been increased and should be similar to the Windows Live Messenger client when connected via HTTP.
• Connecting people who aren’t Windows Live Messenger friends, yet - People have connections/relationships all across the web, we have now made it possible to for users to take these relationships and get to know the people more via IM (both web and client) and then if the user so chooses add that person to their WLM contact list. Anyone who opts into using Messenger on their website makes it possible for the website to play “match maker” for contacts and show the presence of people on any IM client (Web/phone/Xbox/desktop).

Try it out

You can go to dev.live.com/messenger today to add this to your web site.