A few months ago Windows Live Messenger 9 beta was released with tons and tons of new features. Beta testers have been hard at work filling bugs and feedback to the Messenger team. For a moment we all thought that our feedback was being ignored, however today marked a special day for Windows Live as a whole.

Lonn, a program manager for Windows Live Messenger, released a short video over at the MessengerSays blog. The Messenger build that was used in the video is a newer version that has some new features that we will see in the next release. Looking through the video, I've outlined a few of the changes we will see:

• The sign-in window has a totally new look. Simplistic and features a nice "Welcome Back" message.
• Post a note is now enabled, along with the ability to sort through your contacts' updates.
• The PhotoShare application is finally able to save your pictures that your contact shares with you (huge thank you to the team for that). Now lets rally for a zoom feature ;)
• Your contact's status is now shown in text next to their name on your contact list.
• The layout options have been increased due to the high amount of feedback from the beta testers. We now have the ability to:
  1. Sort your categories alphabetically or by status
  2. Show your offline contacts in your categories instead of a separate "Offline" category, or show them in a separate category if you want
  3. Show your offline SMS contacts in their own category

There is a lot more changes coming our way in the next refresh, and I'm looking forward to sharing them with you guys. Subscribe to our RSS feed for the latest information regarding the new version of Windows Live Messenger.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:c1b27998-9f2a-4795-8f87-c034ca04a963&amp;showPlaylist=true&amp;from=shared" target="_new" title="Windows Live Messenger">Video: Windows Live Messenger</a>