It would be nice if you could choose to have special notification for group, instead of only contact.

My particular issue is with the new social network compatibility. I want to be able to see who on online on both wlm and facebook on wlm, but I only want to be informed of wlm people connecting. All I would have to do is to add a notification for people logging on, but not for those in the facebook group.

1 click instead of 200

That sounds like a great idea, I wonder how difficult this would be to implement.

Did you know you can set up other social network or Live service related notices in Windows Live Messenger 2011?

Tools > Options > Alerts > "Manage alerts for social network updates"

This option will lead you to a page where you can set up alerts for various situations, unfortunately none to separate alerts, yet.

It's also possible to disable at least the sound alerts for Facebook contacts, by right-clicking each single one of them and select "Choose sounds.."

Sadly none of these features solve your problem.

Personally, I have a feeling the Windows Live team themselves will implement such a feature in a subsequent update... However I'm only basing that feeling on suspicion.

judging by the time it took them to implement tab, that could go for a long time...

But no, I didn't know about that option. But it seems to be only for facebook news, not the messenger