Microsoft has released a new capability for Outlook (both 2003 and 2007) that allows users to access their Facebook social network (as well as MySpace and LinkedIn) from their email inbox!

In Microsoft’s blog post, they describe the following capabilities available in this plugin:

• "You can add friends and colleagues to Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Windows Live, directly from the Outlook People Pane.
• When viewing a message from someone, you see real-time updates from his or her activities on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Windows Live. You see information that your friends and co-workers have made public on those sites, as long as the email address they are using to communicate with you has been added to their account settings on the social network."

The information you’ll see in Outlook will be live from Facebook and LinkedIn. While viewing an email from someone, you’ll see their profile photo, updates,  news feeds and more. See an example in the image below:

However, this plugin will pull information from email contacts connected to a Facebook or LinkedIn account only. So if your Outlook contains business email accounts and your Facebook friends or LinkedIn Connections use their personal email addresses, it won’t work for them.

Tip: Add your business email account to your personal profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook to enable this capability for your contacts to connect with you! (If you leave your current employer, you can then delete those work email accounts from your profiles.)

You can then download Outlook Social Connector for your language at the Microsoft Download Center. Then you can add the Facebook and LinkedIn Outlook Connectors.

Try it out and let us know what you think about these new capabilities by posting your comments below!