At the PDC back in November we showed off the Outlook Social Connector in Outlook 2010 – a technology that brings your current social networks in to a place, and a way, that many people work.

Today, LinkedIn announced they have built a connector that is available for download. Facebook and MySpace will be next up on deck and with the OSC API and Outlook Social Connector SDK out there, I expect we’ll see more follow. LinkedIn is of course the most popular professional network and the Facebook connector will bring 400m people right in to Outlook alongside Windows Live and MySpace. I think it’s a good approach – integrating existing social networks rather than trying to build new ones :)

here is what the LinkedIn connector enables – I particularly like #2 as that is software making my life easier.

1. Connect to your LinkedIn account to view your colleagues’ status updates and photos next to an e-mail message they sent you.
2. Your colleagues’ latest contact information from LinkedIn automatically updates his or her Outlook contact. Whenever someone changes a phone number, e-mail address, or other contact details, it’s automatically updated in Outlook — you are always up to date.
3. Synchronize your mobile phone with Outlook to stay up-to-date — you don’t have to worry about keeping track of new phone numbers and contact info — contacts’ information from the Web is synchronized to your mobile phone.
4. Grow your professional network directly from within your Inbox — add colleagues with one click.

Wanna play? Here’s what you need to do – jump to step 3 if you already have the Outlook 2010 beta

1. Download the Office 2010 beta at www.Office.com/beta
2. Download the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector from the Microsoft Download Center
3. Get the LinkedIn download for the Outlook Social Connector at www.LinkedIn.com/outlook
4. Stay tuned to the Outlook team blog for availability of the Facebook and MySpace download for the Outlook Social Connector at http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/

via the Microsoft blog