Outlook Social Engine Connectors – 2010

Microsoft Corporation is putting its step toward turning outlook, its desktop e-mail program, into the main core of information for most renowned social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

On Wednesday, Microsoft is launching a “Beta” test version of the outlook social connector. The add-on software, which was previously discussed in last November, adds a pane to the main e-mail reading screen on outlook. This is most recently launched by Microsoft for testing. When the user clicks to read an e-mail message, the new panes fill up with the senders most recent used social networking activities. Those could include the addition of a business and professional contact on LinkedIn or a “what I’m doing now’ status update from Face Book.

Microsoft has a mixed record when it comes to web trends. The company’s free Hotmail and Windows Live messenger program are widely and commonly used all around the world but its Windows Live blog/ social network didn’t boil up with much steam in the face of competition from Face Book. In this case, a small start up called Xobni has built an outlook add-on that combine inbox search with content from Facebook, LinkedIn and others.

Microsoft newly launched software also treats outlook itself as a social network. If the e-mail sender and recipient are jointly working on a same document stored on a company’s server, both will see update if one logs on to make editing and posting but the new software doesn’t let people use outlook to push information back up to LinkedIn, Facebook or other sites.

People using Office 2003, 2007 and recently updated beta version of Office 2010 can download the update using outlook social connector beta.

Office 2010 will be available on stores from 2010 June.

Will Kenedy, a corporate vice president from the Office Group, said that some of Microsoft’s business customers expressed their view that their employees will become less productive if they will have all this extra information in their palms.

But Kenedy sees business friendly uses for the social networking connectors. He expressed that it could speed up processes that require a string of people to sign-off because each person in that chain could see when it’s time for him or her to weigh in.