mynetx: Do you think the Win­dows Live team cares for their users’ de­mands? Why?

Sean Brad­ford: Def­i­nite­ly, as the Win­dows Live ecosys­tem evolves so do the prod­ucts. Win­dows Live Home­page is a per­fect ex­am­ple. When the “What’s new” feed was launched back at CES 2009, users re­quest­ed more feeds be added. Since then Mi­crosoft has added 40+ ser­vices to the list of part­ners, in­clud­ing Face­book, Digg, Twit­ter, and much more.

mynetx: Look­ing into the fu­ture: With­in the next five years, where could you pic­ture Win­dows Live?

Sean Brad­ford: Win­dows Live has grown tremen­dous­ly since its ini­tial launch. I think the main focus on Win­dows Live has turned to its on­line ser­vices. As more and more on­line ser­vices are launched, I fore­see Win­dows Live be­com­ing a cen­tral hub for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion for users.

mynetx: Your job in the Win­dows Live Plat­form team must be a great one, true?

Siebe: Ab­so­lute­ly, I get to work with some very smart peo­ple and de­vel­op great new prod­ucts for Win­dows Live. Being on top of the lat­est and great­est web stuff is a great way to spend my day :) It's a dream come true, haha.

mynetx: As an MS work­er in the Live team, are you run­ning Mes­sen­ger 24/7? Maybe you’ve got kind of a daily rou­tine with Win­dows Live.

Siebe: Yeah, my life pret­ty much re­volves around Mes­sen­ger. I love the new MPOP fea­ture (sign­ing on at work and at home). I talk to my friends and par­ents back home on Mes­sen­ger, as well as the rest of my team. Being up in Cana­da away from my man­ag­er and the rest of my team is a bit of a chal­lenge, but using Mes­sen­ger all day to com­mu­ni­cate makes things a lot eas­i­er.

mynetx: Skins - good word. Is cus­tomiz­ing the Mes­sen­ger in­ter­face fun for you? Or a se­ri­ous busi­ness? Or in be­tween?

Will: Well a bit of both re­al­ly. Orig­i­nal­ly I start­ed skin­ning as a hobby so that I could help im­prove my abil­i­ties as a mul­ti­me­dia de­sign­er. I was hop­ing that by work­ing with an es­tab­lished user in­ter­face I would be able to gain a deep­er un­der­stand­ing as to how the user in­ter­prets UI’s.

I never re­al­ly ex­pect­ed to be doing it for that much main­ly be­cause I didn’t think that au­di­ence was big enough at the time. But it seems that has changed in re­cent times so now I do treat it more se­ri­ous­ly.

But yeah for the most part there is still the orig­i­nal sense of fun which at­tract­ed me to doing it in the first place.

But this is a man who has also outraged millions. His sin? A Faustian pact with dark forces responsible for distributing adware, those pop-up windows that torture PC users the world over. Messenger Plus! Live comes bundled with a "sponsor's program", which the unwary install unwittingly on their machines. They are then subjected to messages urging them to buy insurance, take out credit cards, play poker or download ringtones. To his opponents this breaks a sacred code of geek ethics and the two sides engage in furious online debates. Supporters say Patchou has provided a brilliant piece of software free to millions of people and the adware is harmless; critics call him "a scam artist making money off gullible young Live Messenger users".

After earlier deals with Verizon and Net2Phone, and then completely pulling outbound PSTN calling earlier this year, Microsoft has teamed up with Telefonica, the largest telecom provider in Latin America, to reinstate the Make a Phone Call feature in Windows Live Messenger. Telefonica's Voype service allows Messenger users in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, the United States and Venezuela to make calls directly from their client to landlines and cell phones around the world at a reasonable price.