John Richards, director of Microsoft's Windows Live Platform, wrote on Microsoft developers' blog today that the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant has paired with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged to let users share their Windows Live contact lists with the social networking sites.

Richards wrote that the shift gives users more control over their data and eliminates the need for data sharing techniques such as "screen-scraping," which is often used to rip data from the screens showing friends' lists. Scraping, Richards said, "unduly puts customers at risk for phishing attacks, identity fraud and spam."

The partnerships with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged make it easier, safer and more secure for people to have access to their contacts and relationships from more places online. Richards said the five social networking giants will adopt the new Windows Live Contacts API, which lets the social networking sites request access to the Windows Live contact lists of their members by sending those members to a log-in page hosted by Microsoft. Once on that page, members can enter their Windows Live username and password without passing them through a third party. After that, the user is permitted to enter the social networking site to access contact data.

"Simply stated, our efforts aim to put users at the center of their online experience," he wrote.

Partnering with the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and the three other social network sites gives Microsoft the ability to "create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services," Microsoft said.

Today, Facebook and Bebo can already be used to find friends using Windows Live, meaning members of those sites can invite friends on their Windows Live contacts list to join their network at those sites without revealing their Windows Live password. Similar functionality for Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn is expected to go live in coming months, Microsoft said.

Windows Live users, in turn, will now be able to invite new friends into Windows Live Messenger using the social networking sites through a new Website Microsoft launched, www.invite2messenger.net.

Creating the "two-way street" shows that Windows Live and its partners are paying close attention to the relationship context and privacy management to create better user experiences, Richards wrote.

"We understand that just because people have a friend relationship with a contact on one social network, that doesn't necessarily mean that they want the same relationship on another network," Richards wrote. "To preserve the context of the relationship, we are requiring the relationships be re-established in each experience with permission from the friend or contact, rather than automatically storing the data."