The Outlook Social Connector is designed to link Outlook to social networks, although at this point, it only communicates with LinkedIn. It is available as a download for Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 and the beta version of Outlook 2010; all three versions have identical feature sets.

Installing it on Outlook 2003 and 2007 is a simple, two-part process. First you install Outlook Social Connector itself, which gives Outlook the overall capability to communicate with social networking sites. You then install a specific connector for each social networking site.

(Be aware that, in order to run the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector and the associated LinkedIn connector, you first have to uninstall the version of the Outlook Social Connector that came with the beta of Office 2010. For details, . And if you're having problems getting it working with Outlook 2010, go to this Help page.)

While only the LinkedIn connector is available, Microsoft has said that connectors will be available for Facebook and MySpace in the first half of 2010. Microsoft has also an API and an Outlook Social Connector SDK so that developers can build their own connectors. For this review, I tested the Outlook Social Connector on Outlook 2007.