A brief outline of what to expect from the Outlook Social Connector (via MSDN blog):

• The People Pane A name, picture, and title for your colleagues whenever reading a message from them.
• Rich history See a rich communications history for each person that sends you messages with one-click access to the most recent messages and attachments.
• Activities Download and see real-time activity for your colleagues from business and social networks.
• Get friendly Request someone as a colleague or friend with one click. Synchronize those colleagues with Outlook and keep them up-to-date as their information changes.
• SharePoint 2010 Connect to the new MySite social networking experience right out of the box with the OSC & SharePoint 2010.
• Extensible A public SDK allows anyone to build a connection to business or consumer social networks.

It’s now available on Outlook 2010 Beta and we’re wondering about the Outlook Social Connector.  Has anyone been using it?  It seems like Outlook’s version of Google Buzz with the mission of LinkedIn.  Have we reached the copycat era of social media or is there going to be a real breakthrough in connecting with people?  With the onslaught of real-time results, we’re thinking that we’ll need a predictive formula.  This social media plug-in will predict where all of your friends will be going and what they will be doing based on their past entries…  It’s Tuesday.  Amber is going to go to the Starbucks on King St. and will tweet about their delicious bran muffins at approximately 9:18am.  Oh [big] brother!

Source: Michael Affronti, MSDN

Photo courtesy of Search Engine Land

Greg Sterling from Search Engine Land reviewed the new Bing iPhone app yesterday and the overall feeling is great.  Bing’s iPhone app is a testament that Microsoft has “come a long way in acknowledging the importance of the iPhone platform… and an important step for Microsoft to gain access to the mobile internet’s most active and engaged audience right now.”  He describes it as stacking “up very well and [offering] a more ‘integrated’ experience in many respects.”  Queries can be keyed in or spoken using voice search technology and he says that it is even more accurate than Google’s.  There is also map access and a location finder.  Click here for the full article.

Photo courtesy of Bing

Bing has had a deal in place for the last week to integrate Facebook status updates and tweets from Twitter into Real Time Search Results.  Google announced their deal with Twitter last week as well, also announcing that Facebook updates would also be made available soon.  However, today Google released their deal with Facebook and revealed that only status updates from Facebook pages would be available in their search results (ie: not personal pages, but company pages).  Bing will also have the personal status updates, not just public Facebook pages.  The reason?  Facebook says, “The terms of the Google deal were specifically related to public updates on Pages. But our conversations with both companies are continually evolving regarding ways in which we might work together in the future.”

Sources: Search Engine Land, Bing.com

Today, on BusinessInsider.com, there was a story regarding Microsoft offering money to companies (a big part being News Corp.) that take themselves off of Google search results, a process they call “de-listing.”  “The idea is to force Google to pay for content, thinning its currently fat margins,” Nicholas Carlson writes.  But Google’s Matt Brittin said that “Google [does] not need news content to survive.”  Although it might spread out “search engine share some,” it remains true that Google will probably still have other websites indexed that carry the news stories.

-Nicholas Carlson, Silicon Alley Insider

BusinessInsider.com