MySpace, LinkedIn and now Facebook, Microsoft  continues adding social network sites to Outlook, to enable the users of its email client to view updates from their friends on the social networking sites without log on to the site and to do it all in real-time. Microsoft has introduced an add-on “People Pane” to the Outlook from where users can access the profile and updates of their Facebook friends.

"You can view your social network as you look through your email to stay connected with your friends, family, and colleagues," said Paco Contreras Herrera, Group Product Manager, Microsoft Office. In February, Microsoft released a plug-in named ‘Outlook Social Connector’ that allowed the users of Outlook to directly access their LinkedIn contacts. Later in March, the company integrated MySpace to the email client.

The company states it has built Outlook Social Connector keeping in mind privacy and security issues of users. The Outlook Social Connector doesn't add another social network into the mix; rather it offers busy people the convenience of accessing them in Outlook," Contreras Herrera said. "We expect more partners down the line," he added.

Users of Outlook 2003 and 2007 can download the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector from the Microsoft Download Center. Outlook 2010 users can avail through Microsoft Update. Along with Facebook, the users of Outlook can access the Windows Live in its latest updates.

A report from Nielsen ratings says that 67 percent of the internet users globally use social networks and blogs to interact with others.

The partnership comes in the wake of rapidly increasing user base of Facebook, which saw tremendous growth in users from 200 million to 500 million globally in the past 15 months.

Recently, Yahoo partnered with Facebook to integrate its services with the social networking site. It allowed the users of Yahoo and Facebook to view the updates from their friends on Yahoo Mail and Yahoo.com. While Hotmail has the facility to receive updates from Facebook and MySpace, Gmail is integrated with Google Buzz, a social networking site.