Guest Blog by Philbert Shih, Structure Research
Office 365 recently introduced capabilities for importing contacts to Exchange Online from popular social networks. The capability is called Connect and supports importing of contacts from LinkedIn and Facebook and integration with the Exchange Online address book. Right now LinkedIn is supported for users worldwide, while Facebook is currently only supported for US-based customers (efforts are well underway to support this capability worldwide).
Microsoft is not the first email platform to support pulling in of social network contacts. Open-Xchange has been doing this for several years now. Late or not, Microsoft is enabling something that will sooner than later be a must-have. The challenge for Microsoft is what else it can pull on to its platform. Google and Open-Xchange, for example, have transitioned email from a standalone service to a suite that manages and stores not just messages, but photos, music and documents. Both have also integrated tools for document editing and creation. Exchange remains a business-class email service but the blurring lines between work and personal make at least some degree of integration inevitable. Social media contacts is likely just the start.
*Disclosure: Microsoft and Open-Xchange are Structure Research subscribers.