Microsoft Outlook Social Connector

With more of us using both Facebook and LinkedIn for communication and networking, the Social Connector for Microsoft Outlook is a useful tool.

Once installed you can then select the different social networks to add to Outlook. The list currently includes Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Windows Live Messenger. They need to be downloaded and installed separately, which is a minor inconvenience.

After that a new pane is added underneath the email preview pane in Outlook. This displays information about the sender taken from the networks where you have connections.

There is an overall summary or details of news, emails, attachments, meetings and status updates.

The pane can even be used to invite contacts to join your social networks directly.