Microsoft on Monday said that millions of Xbox Live members have used the new social-media features that the company pushed live a week ago.
In June, Microsoft announced it would begin offering Xbox Live users access to Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm. And while the manifestation of each of those services is scaled down on Xbox Live, the rollout has been one of the company's big pushes this fall for its hugely popular online system.
According to Microsoft spokesman David Dennis, the first-week figures show that at least 2 million Xbox Live users have logged into Facebook, and that half a million Last.fm accounts were created in the first 24 hours of availability. Dennis didn't address how many Xbox Live users have used the service's Twitter feature, except to say that there have been "tweets from nearly every market where we have Xbox Live."
So, based on the data Dennis provided, the Facebook integration with Xbox Live has had the most adoption. And while 2 million people logging into Facebook is far short of the 20 million total Xbox Live users, it is notable that fully one tenth of the service's users have tried the Facebook feature in just the first week.
Still, there's no way to know if the numbers of members using the social-media features will climb higher. There are those who feel that the Facebook and Twitter implementations lack some of the richness that has led to those services' phenomenal growth, and one has to wonder how many Xbox Live users will choose to spend time with Facebook or Twitter instead of doing things like watching movies or playing games.
As for Last.fm, Dennis said that in the first week, Xbox Live users had streamed 120 million minutes of music. Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET.
Lastly, Dennis said that 1.7 million Xbox Live users had gone to the new Zune marketplace--formerly known as the Xbox Live marketplace--and watched video.