Windows Live Messenger is an Instant Messaging (IM) application developed by Microsoft. It is an easy and a quick way to communicate with other people and it is simple to use. It is useful for keeping in touch with family and friends. In MSN Messenger, you can add static smileys, give yourself a nickname, change the color scheme of your messenger box, add or change your display picture, send pictures to your contacts, send and receive animated smileys, etc. It supports operating systems like Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Windows CE, Xbox 360, Blackberry OS iOS, Java ME, S60 on Symbian OS 9.x, Windows XP up to wave 3, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Zune HD.
Windows Contacts is a contact manager which is packed in Windows Vista and Windows 7, which replaced and retained most of the functionality of Windows Address Book, with an integration of Windows Mail. Windows Contacts uses a new XML-based schema format where each contact appears as an individual contact file, and can saved custom information including pictures. The file in a .wab format and the open standards, *.vcf (vCard) and *.csv (CSV) are also supported. Some uses of Windows Contacts are: a) it is implemented as a special folder in Windows Vista and Windows 7, b) it can import vCard, CSV, WAB and LDIF formats, c) it can export in vCard 2.1 and CSV formats, d) it can print contacts in Memo, Business Card, and Phone List formats, e) individual contacts can be quickly accessed from the Start menu search text box, f) Windows Live People, the contact manager for Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail can saved its information in the Windows Contacts folder if the option to encrypt it is unchecked in Windows Live Messenger. At any time contacts in Messenger are updated, they'll be updated in Windows Contacts as well, and g) it exposes APIs for making new contacts, reading and writing in an existing contact, adding a "Label" in the form of a URI to a "Property" or a "Property" to a "Contact", API for matching devices with Windows Contacts.