Unlike some other social networking services, Windows Live Spaces is not like the Wild West when it comes to whom you allow to invite you to their list of friends or even just receiving request emails from others. Dare explains below how it all works. As well, remember in your profile settings, you have settings to control who can view your Space, view your contact details, and so on. After reading the points beow, you might want to re-check your profile permissions to make sure they’re what you want. Oh, by the way, you can get to your Communication settings from Options (look down the list on the left-hand side).
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Dealing with Unwanted Friend Request Emails in Windows Live Spaces
Earlier this week I was showing off the new Windows Live Spaces to my girlfriend in an attempt to try and explain what I do at Microsoft all day. When I showed her the Friends list feature she was surprised that the site had morphed from a blogging service into a social networking service and wondered whether our users wouldn’t react negatively to the change. Actually that’s paraphrasing what she said. What she said was
If I was using your site to post my blog and my pictures for people I know, I’d be really annoyed if I started having to deal with strangers asking me to be their friend. If I wanted to deal with that shit crap I’d have just gone to MySpace.
That’s valid criticism and is something the people who worked on the design of this feature (i.e. me, Mike, Neel, Matt, John and a bunch of others) took into account. One of the key themes of Windows Live is that it puts users in control of their Web experience. Getting repeated email requests to be some stranger’s "friend" without a way to stop them doesn’t meet that requirement. This is why there is a communications preferences feature in Windows Live Spaces which can be reached by clicking on http://[yourspacename].spaces.live.com/Settings/Communication/
Below is a screenshot of the page
Don’t like getting friend requests as email? Disable this by unchecking ‘Also send invitations and e-mails to my email address‘. Don’t want to deal with requests from total strangers wanting to be on your friend’s list? Then move the setting on ‘These people can request to be on your friends list‘ to something more restrictive like ‘Messenger buddies’ so that you only get friend requests from people on your IM buddy list who you already know.You hang out a virtual DoNotDisturb sign and we’ll honor it.
Making sure that our users have total control over who they communicate and share information with is key to how we approach building social software for Windows Live. Thanks to all the users of Windows Live Spaces who have made it the most popular blogging service in the world.
Tags: Spaces communication settings, Windows Live Space
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