Microsoft recently launched the Outlook Social Connector to help users keep track of their friends and colleagues as they grow their professional network.

Microsoft’s Social Connector is available for immediate download, and it will allow you to see your email contacts’ Facebook profile photos, news feeds, status updates, picture uploads and wall posts. The move is similar to the recent integration of LinkedIn on Outlook, but will have a much bigger pool to draw from thanks to Facebook’s vast network.

Although you will be able to view incoming feeds, you will not be able to update or comment via Outlook Social Connector yet. However this functionality is already in the pipeline, as Microsoft says the next step is to provide a richer social experience by integrating the ability to push data to other social networks, improving the look and feel of Outlook Social Connector, and adding other social networks from other regions.

“The Outlook Social Connector and providers from partners such as Facebook makes it easy and convenient for busy people to stay in touch with the people they care about” Chris Adams, Microsoft’s Office 2010 product manager said.

According to digitaltrends.com, we can expect more moves by Microsoft to push into social networking, as some predictions suggest that by 2014, up to 20% of business users will use social networking services as their primary means of online communication.

Nate Elliot, a research analyst said: “Microsoft has always maintained that it has its own social network in Windows Messenger so it is pretty notable that it is reaching beyond its own products.”

Outlook 2003 and 2007 users can download the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector from the Microsoft Download Center and Outlook 2010 users can get it as an update.

Sources: memeburn; digitaltrends.com; Image source: Google images