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Fans of the Xbox 360 will notice their systems update on December4th, and according to reports will now allow a social networkingfeature called “Friends of Friends.†There exists currently within theXbox live framework the ability to maintain a list of friends,presumably regular gaming partners.
The new update will extend that functionality to allow severallevels of visibility of your friend list to others. Those 13 and upwill be allowed the ability to show their friends who else is on theirlist. Adults will be able to make their friends list public. For thoseunder 13, all friend lists will remain blocked.
What’s also somewhat interesting is how Microsoft is billing thisupdate in their press releases, saying that the feature can be used asa tool to “find old friends or connect with new ones within thecommunity of more the eight million people.†Of course, a community ofeight million does not a social networking powerhouse make, but itain’t no slouch either. I doubt there will be much use in the socialnetwork (at least initially) beyond being able to scope out otherpotential game-mates.
But as Microsoft rounds out more of these features, one has towonder at what point the integration with Facebook will start.Microsoft obviously invested at a fairly steep valuation, there isclearly open hooks in the Facebook system for it. With Facebook andXbox being the two clearly successful products that Microsoft have onthe market at the moment (especially in light of the foibles of Vista highlighted today at Devil Mountain Software), you’d think they’d want to leverage that success even further.
Quote:
Via GamesIndustry.biz Microsoft is introducing more social networking features to its celebrated Xbox Live service.
As part of the Fall update going live on December 4, users will beable to view Friends lists directly from the Dashboard, or keep thelist private.
Citing popular web services Facebook and MySpace, the publisherbelieves that "this type of capability has largely come to be expectedfrom consumers as a means to relate in an online community."
The new dashboard update will also allow users to download original Xbox games – including Halo and Fable – for 1200 Microsoft Points.
Ars Technica calls the move“very MySpace†but social networking on XBox Live wont be in the sameformat. Online game collaboration on Xbox includes voice chat, so thesocial aspects wont resemble the profile pages and similar socialnetworking aspects we’ve come to expect from social networking sites,but it will be a much more social service in a traditional sense of theword social.
TechCrunch wrote:
The update will include privacy settings that will allow users tomake their friends list available to everyone (members 18 or older),friends only (13 years and up) or blocked, which will be the defaultsetting for users under 13 but available as a choice to everyone.
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