Social Gatherings - Office : Ultimate Tips and Tricks

Microsoft is often seen as a stodgy, old-fashioned company, which is probably why Microsoft tries very hard to add social networking features to most new products. Outlook is no different, and the 2010 revision contains a feature called Social Connector. The job of Social Connector is to import social network contacts into Outlook so that you have that information available when you send emails.
Office 2010 supports four different social networks - Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Windows Live Messenger. The connectivity isn’t installed by default, so you have to go to the Microsoft Office website and download the software. Fortunately the installer is no more than 12 megabytes, so it’s a quick download.
Once you run the Social Connector Provider for your favorite social network, go to the People Pane in the View Tab, then click on Account Settings. A window will pop up showing all of the connectors you have downloaded and installed; if you did not visit the website above and install the software, you’ll only see the My Site option. Clicking on the checkbox next to a particular social network will bring up a login screen.

After you’ve done this, information about a contact will appear below the reading pane. This may be minimized by default, so click on an email to open it for reading and then find the small contact listing, separated by a movable white bar, at the bottom.
This feature pulls information about anyone. Of course, if you’re talking to them regularly in email you may want to add them as a friend, which you can do by clicking on the little green plus symbol.