Microsoft Outlook to become a lot more social, integrate Facebook and MySpace. Cubicle dwellers rejoice, IT managers cringe..

Posted at 6:32 am February 17, 2010 by

While those stuck reading this in some dimly lit, cold, and rank smelling cubicle may have nothing but malice and dissent for Microsoft Outlook as it takes up countless hours of their lives each day, people who actually choose to use it on the outside seem to think pretty favorably of it. Outside of the enterprise world, Outlook itself is a pretty decent desktop email client that can at least hold it’s own against many other desktop email clients from various software companies. But even in the consumer space, Microsoft Office still feels like it’s at work. That stodgy corporate image is hard to shake.

Last year, Microsoft announced that they would be rolling out a “Social Networking Connector” plugin for Office 2010 that would allow social networking sites to be more deeply integrated with the defacto corporate standard desktop email client. No surprise here, LinkedIn was the first to jump on the bandwagon seeing as how it is a Facebook of sorts for the corporate world. But LinkedIn integration is hardly going to pick up any worthwhile amount of consumer based users as most of those said users don’t use LinkedIn.

Consider that problem solved. Microsoft has officially announced that within the next few months, two new, big partners are joining the Office social frenzy — MySpace and Facebook. I’d say that by integrating two of the most consumer focused social networks into the corporate workhorse email client can only go up. That is, if the integration is deep (we don’t know yet), well laid out, and easy to use. If not, it will be an epic failure.

I hold out hope however, as I myself am one of those very people I outlined above — stuck in a cold, dark, dimly lit cubicle that reeks of old cheese and 1974. Now, the only question is if those who run the network I use will allow such social shenanigans to take place. At least in my case, I think not. But for the rest of the Office/Outlook using world, this new social madness is looking might nice.

Question: Will MySpace and Facebook integration keep you from leaving Outlook or even draw you in if you’ve never used it before?

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