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LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace Coming to Outlook

by Terrence O'Brien on February 18, 2010 at 06:28 AM

LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace Coming to Outlook

There has been some grumbling around the Internet about how Google's Buzz merely adds noise to the sanctity of your Gmail inbox. But, like it or not, combining social networking and e-mail is the future. Even Microsoft agrees, hence today's announcement that the company has struck deals with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace that will bring your disparate networks of friends and colleagues to Outlook.

Outlook 2010, when combined with Outlook Social Connect, will have the power to bring status updates and user photos to your e-mail. The MySpace and Facebook plug-ins won't be coming out till later this year, when Outlook 2010 is officially launched, and details about exactly how they'll function haven't been revealed. But, starting today, users can download the beta of Outlook Social Connect, and start integrating LinkedIn with their daily e-mail use.
The LinkedIn plug-in will display your friends' status updates and photos next to their e-mails, and will let you quickly add new colleagues to your LinkedIn network from your inbox. More impressively, it can automatically update your contacts when someone changes their e-mail address or phone number within LinkedIn. That becomes particularly handy if you sync your smartphone with Outlook.

Thus, social and professional networking are only going to become more tightly integrated with e-mail. The question is whether or not developers will be able to make the marriage seamless and unobtrusive. Let's just hope we won't have to train our spam filters to start blocking Facebook updates. [From: Microsoft]

Tags: facebook, linkedin, microsoft, myspace, outlook, outlook 2010, outlook social connect, Outlook2010, OutlookSocialConnect, top

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