Wouldn’t it be great to see at a glance the latest happenings in a person’s life right as you were about to send them an email? That’s the promise of the historic integration between Outlook and Plaxo Pulse.
Why “historic”? Because we are in the very early days of what I call the “Social Web,” an era in which the open web is fundamentally transformed by capabilities initially developed inside popular (but closed) social networks. The tidal wave of apps developed for the Facebook platform point to the hidden value that can be unlocked when applications are socially-enabled. But what if, instead of widgetizing apps to connect them with the “social graph”, you turned the idea around, and brought “social” to applications? That’s the concept behind the latest release of the Plaxo Toolbar for Microsoft Outlook...
We’ve integrated Pulse into the email system that most of us use at work. What does that mean? Now, you can see recent activity on a person’s Pulse stream in the Plaxo “Click to Connect” box and in Outlook’s “Contacts Detail” view.
This mashup makes it really easy to:
- See what the person is sharing on a large and growing list of sites, including blogs, Digg, Twitter, del.icio.us, Flickr, Yelp, and dozens of others
- Click over to see a person’s full profile and content stream on Pulse
- Keep growing your network based on who you’re communicating with via Outlook
That’s all in addition to the other things you can do with Click-to-Connect (as a result of previous mashups we did between Outlook, Plaxo, and the web), such as:
- “Google” the person with a single click
- Get a map or directions
- Initiate a VOIP call on a regular phone with a single click
If you’re already using Pulse, download the new toolbar for Outlook here. If you're not yet a member, get your account set up first.
John McCrea
VP of Marketing