Starting with December 4, Microsoft will offer to the Xbox LIVE members the possibility to checkout the list of their friends right from the Dashboard.

Inspired by the way in which users connect in social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, the Friend of Friends feature will let users find old friends or connect with new ones within the community of more than eight million people on Xbox LIVE around the globe.

Microsoft announced that when the Fall Dashboard update will be distributed the new Xbox LIVE will be active, enabling members to see the Friends lists of other Xbox LIVE members.

Of course, if you don’t want to share your friends list with the other members, you can connect here to define another setting for Friends of Friends.

Microsoft said other features of the Dashboard updates are to be disclosed later this month.

So far Microsoft announced Xbox Originals, a service through which the gamers will be able to buy and download original Xbox games such as Halo, Crimson Skies, Fables and Psychonauts.

Also Microsoft is to release Xbox 360 Family Timer, a tool which allows parents to limit the amount of time kids spend on video games. The program will enable daily or weekly limits on the amount of gaming and entertainment time spent using Microsoft's console.

The Xbox Live community is expected to reach 10 million members by June 2008.

So far the eight million members of Xbox Live have spent over 3.2 billion collective hours playing online, unlocking more than 600 achievements and creating a total combined Gamerscore of more than 14 billion. In total, Xbox Live has hosted 2.5 billion game sessions since launch, with more than 5.6 million hosted each day thus far in 2007.