Outlook integration with Social Media

Since many years Microsoft Outlook is one of the most important tools in my professional life.
Already a while ago Microsoft announced their plans to integrate connections with Social Media platforms, straight into the contacts and e-mail features of Outlook.

As a Proactive and Professional Networker, this was of course something I was very excited about. Normally I'm not much of a beta-tester, but this time I just couldn't resist and downloaded the Outlook Social Connector, the plugin for Outlook that opens the gates toward the Social Media platforms.

Today there is only one add-in available for this plugin, connecting Outlook to the Nr. 1 Business platform : LinkedIn.
Soon other add-in's will be available too. Microsoft already announced connections to MySpace, Facebook and Windows Live.

The setup and configuration was not the easiest I've ever done. I installed the plugin onto Office 2007 Professional (Downloading a beta of Office 2010 was even too wild for me ...)
My biggest problem was the fact the add-in for LinkedIn wouldn't accept my login and password. After debugging this problem I found out that the client won't accept passwords containing a 'space'. I changed my password and got it up and running.

Result : It does exactly what it says on the box. When I receive an email from someone who's already in my LinkedIn network, I get extra information at the bottom of the page.

Even without the Linkedin connection it's already worth installing because the plugin gives you a history feature to track back all communication.
In the contacts section of Outlook you get an extra file with your LinkedIn contacts.

My conclusion : Bring on those new clients for Facebook and MySpace ... this is good stuff !!!