Microsoft brings Facebook and MySpace into Office 2010

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 18 Feb 2010 at 09:11

Microsoft is boosting Outlook's social-networking credentials, by adding Facebook and MySpace support to the software.

The services arrive courtesy of the new Outlook Social Connector (OSC), a new feature in Outlook 2010 that adds updates from social-networking sites to the foot of email messages from that contact.

The Connector will drag in status updates, photos and other personal details from your Facebook/MySpace friends, with Microsoft insisting that the privacy settings you apply on those sites will be carried over into Outlook.

Facebook and MySpace will join business social network LinkedIn in the list of services compatible with the Outlook Social Connector. Indeed, Microsoft has just released a beta of LinkedIn for Outlook.

The arrival of social networks in Outlook could present a headache for companies that block access to services such as Facebook.

It's also currently a problem for those running the 64-bit version of Office 2010. The Outlook Social Connector is currently only compatible with 32-bit versions of the suite, and can cause Outlook to crash if erroneously installed in 64-bit versions.