Facebook chat in Hotmail now available everywhere
Today, Facebook chat is available to Hotmail customers worldwide, wherever Facebook is available. — When we first announced the ability to chat with Facebook friends from Hotmail, we were only able to offer this to customers in six regions.
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a loop Microsoft started with the 2007 worldwide launch of Windows Live Hotmail, which put the mail service in front of a global audience, and that Facebook opened with February 2010's decision to make chat available outside its own site. The initial Hotmail integration covered only six regions; as of today it runs wherever Facebook itself operates.
First-order effects
- Hotmail customers worldwide can now chat with Facebook friends from their inbox, keeping sessions inside Microsoft's webmail instead of leaving for facebook.com.
- Facebook extends its chat presence onto a surface owned by a partner-turned-advertising-rival, gaining reach among users who never visit its site directly.
Second-order effects
- Rival webmail providers face pressure to strike similar third-party network integrations, since inbox dwell time now doubles as someone else's social graph.
- The deal lands in the same month Facebook hired Microsoft ad chief Carolyn Everson, deepening a commercial relationship that spans both distribution and revenue.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, messaging stops being a destination feature and becomes an embedded layer distributed through partners' properties — with each host deciding whose presence lives inside its product.
- Levchin's rumored view that Facebook's top-tier value depends on replacing core messaging makes every external chat surface a strategic test of that thesis, though it remains unconfirmed.
The trend: Instant messaging is shifting from walled-garden destinations toward embedded presence distributed through third-party platforms.