• AP et al., Wednesday, February 17, 2010 12:55 PM

Despite the many pitfalls presented by social media (made clear by Google's highly criticized Buzz launch), Microsoft is ramping up related efforts with the release of Outlook Social Connector -- a socially souped-up version of its email client, featuring a user's recent social-networking activities.

"Windows Phone 7 is not the only Microsoft product designed to act as a social networking hub, as Microsoft is also positioning Outlook 2010 as the desktop connection bridging together, and centralizing data from websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace," Softpedia reports.

"The announcement suggests that Microsoft is in the race to aggregate its users' social-networking content into a single 'hub,' a trend being embraced by companies ranging from Google to Xobni," writes eWeek. "Previously, LinkedIn had also partnered with IBM, Research In Motion and Twitter to port its users' profiles onto those companies' respective networks and devices."

Yet, "Google added Buzz to Gmail with mixed results," notes AppScout. "If there's a lesson to be learned here, it seems to be that, while social networks remain popular, there are still certain properties that users would like to remain untouched by the phenomenon ... If the response to Google is any indication, email is one such space."

Arguably a worse fate than user backlash, however, Microsoft's previous "social" efforts have gone largely ignored. "Microsoft has a mixed record when it comes to Web trends," notes The Associated Press. "The company's free Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger programs are widely used, but its Windows Live blog/social network didn't pick up much steam in the face of competition from Facebook."

Whether the new Outlook succeeds or not, some analysts see the broader trend quite clearly: Email is here to stay. "Not only do moves like this reinforce how important social media has become to business, but they also reinforce the staying power of email," explains WebProNews. "There has been a great deal of discussion in the past about how social media could kill email, but to the contrary, we're seeing more and more moves by social networks to become more integrated with the email channel ... For email marketers, this is great news."

Read the whole story at AP et al. »