Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Brings Facebook and MySpace to Outlook

Microsoft Outlook has just got more social courtesy the new Social Connector that brings MySpace and Facebook integration into MS Outlook. Microsoft had also partnered with LinkedIn earlier and has now introduced LinkedIn for Outlook enabling users to get insights and alerts from their connections at LinkedIn. New partnerships with MySpace and Facebook mean that Outlook users will soon be able to check their MySpace accounts and update their Facebook status right from Microsoft Outlook. This announcement seems to be a response to Google Buzz, a tool that introduced the concept of integrating social networks right in your email boxes. Microsoft seems to have taken a step beyond that by integrating social networking capabilities in their desktop based software.

Microsoft Outlook Social Connector can turn MS Outlook into a desktop based social network with enough capabilities to compete with recently launched Google Buzz. Level of integration with MySpace and Facebook accounts, however, is not yet clear. It’s very likely to have features to enable you to receive and respond to your social networks feed in Outlook. It will be interesting how community responds to this move since Microsoft Outlook is widely used desktop based email software while MySpace and Facebook are considered as time wasters and are blocked by many. When users will be able to access their social networks on Outlook, it will either be yet another time waster for employees or will be a greater collaboration tool.