Microsoft Outlook To Pull In Facebook, Myspace & Linkedin Content

Software giant Microsoft has announced that the company will dish out a social networking add-on for its Microsoft Outlook email client which will allow users to stay connected with their contacts on various social networking platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

The Redmond based company said on Wednesday that it will be releasing the beta test version of Outlook Social Connector, which is designed to add a new window pane on the main email reading page of Outlook. 

Whenever a user clicks on a new mail to read it, the new pane will display all the recent social networking activity of the sender, which, according to Microsoft, might display the sender's LinkedIn information or Facebook status if any.

The company also announced that the Outlook Social Connector add-on is aimed at making Outlook email client into a social networking platform in its own. 

A spokesperson for Microsoft explained that if the email sender and receiver were working on the same document stored in a company's Sharepoint server, each will be able to see an update if the other logs-in to make changes.

The Outlook Social Connector will be available for Office 2003, 2007 and beta versions of Office 2010 and users can download the plug-in from Wednesday.