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

Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media found that her Twitter trending topic feed was slightly different last week.  Since we are in Charleston, we hadn’t yet seen the new Local Trends on Twitter.  Basically, it’s a breakdown of local trends which will be great for reaching the appropriate demographic when marketing on Twitter.  You can now see what is relevant in your direct area as opposed to the entire Twitterverse.  The cities that are currently experiencing Local Trends include L.A, NYC, Chicago, D.C., the UK, Atlanta and Dallas.  Here is a look at local trends side by side (courtesy of Lisa Barone):

On today’s Twitter trending topics, you will see Haiti and Yele in spots number one and two.  Twitter has become instrumental for getting the word out about worldwide crises and how to help.  The American Red Cross has joined in by assigning a number for people to text and donate.  When you text 909-99, you will donate $10 to go directly to the aid of the Haiti earthquake victims (showing up on your phone bill for that month).  The updates can be quickly seen on Google Real Time Search Results:

Yele is a program developed by recording artist Wyclef Jean committed to keeping the spirit, heart and pride of the Haiti people intact.  He, too, assigned a number (501501) to automatically donate $5 to the disaster relief of Haitians after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

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

Within the next few days, the company announced that it will start displaying real time search results about midway down the results page.

Photo courtesy of SearchEngineLand.com

There is a “Pause” button if you wish to stop the news from streaming but you cannot remove the tool all together.  Instead, let’s discuss what you could utilize in the search to filter what you want to see.  There is a “Latest” toggle which will give you tweets from Twitter.com, news results and web pages as they come in.  The “Updates” toggle will allow you to filter even more, simply receiving tweets.  In the future, Google plans to also release Facebook updates (for those who have public profiles), but not just yet.

Visiture is excited to see the even further exposure of social media into the Google Real Time Search results.  This can only benefit your company if you update your Twitter pages, Facebook fan pages and LinkedIn pages consistently.  We have the tools, especially with this onslaught of social media and Google Real Time Search results to market your brand effectively and improve your ROI.

Source: Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineLand.com

Photo courtesy of greatdance.com

In case you were wondering, Social Media is taking over the world.  Facebook statistics are astounding!  Over 350 million users with 50% of them logging on daily.  What does this have to do with marketing? Well, the fact is simple.  If you create a Facebook Fan Page, you are sure to promote your product or company in an organic way (through people “liking it” and sharing with others).  Facebook is comprised of the younger and older, friends, siblings, parents, grandparents, colleagues, students, and the list goes on!  Essentially, it reaches everyone.  With people actively using it every day, it is easy to see why it would be a great marketing tool.  Visiture can help you create profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or help you optimize the ones you already have.  Because these sites have so many pages pointing to them and are being updated so frequently, they are often at the top of the natural results on Google and Yahoo!.