Story by
Drew Olanoff
Drew Olanoff was The Next Web's West Coast Editor. He coined the phrase "Social Good" and invented the "donation by action" model for onlin Drew Olanoff was The Next Web's West Coast Editor. He coined the phrase "Social Good" and invented the "donation by action" model for online charitable movements. He founded #BlameDrewsCancer. You can follow him on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, or email [email protected]
Microsoft announced the re-birth of its webmail service today by launching Outlook.com and the service is getting more social thanks to the ability to hook into your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Twitter announced its portion in a tweet of course:
Now you can connect your Twitter account to outlook.com to see your contacts’ public profile info and latest Tweets beside emails.
— Twitter (@twitter) July 31, 2012
The Facebook part hasn’t been talked about as much, but you can authorize your account from within Outlook.com to use its messaging services and to connect to contacts. Services like LinkedIn, Flickr, and YouTube are along for the ride as well.
This is very similar to the integrations that AOL Mail recently released, but offers a few more options.
As we noted earlier:
Outlook will display information about the person you are emailing with next to the note, as well as snag an image of them from either Twitter or Facebook, assuming that you are linked. It’s a small thing, but it is nice.
Will this make you gravitate towards Outlook.com or are you staying where you are? Let us know in the comments.