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Microsoft has now planned to have social networking services inside its Office 2010 applications. Microsoft Office 2010 is planned to be released this year.

Social media sites like LinkedIn have already started creating plugins which can integrate your Outlook with LinkedIn by passing updates to your inboxes. Microsoft is working with MySpace and Facebook to create a similar synch program.

Dev Balasubramanian, Outlook Office group product manager stated, “”It really is about bringing friends, family, and colleagues into you inbox,” Balasubramanian said in a video posted at the US software giant’s website.”

Dev also added, “As you communicate with them you can see their social activities; you can see all of the folks in your social network and it updates as you are reading your email.”

Though Microsoft feels LinkedIn connection would help people using email programs stay updated on job status, contact informations or affiliations on the friend network, one would feel would many companies allow these features be used by its employees. Given the fact that LinkedIn is a huge source for job updates, job searches and enquiries.

Elliot Shumkler, product management director, LinkedIn mentions, “LinkedIn is all about your professional network. Meanwhile, Outlook powers the professional inbox so the match is very clear.”

The test version is available online at office.com/beta

Looks like Google is not satisfied with all its kills. Yes, it does get hungry often. With Google Buzz, it’s all against Facebook now.

With the recent Google Buzz, now Google allows you to automatically follow people you email or chat with. You can also share your ideas to the internet world or share only with your closest friends. Buzz also allows you to keep your comments in your inbox so you can keep the conversation going.

Google Buzz also allows you to import your profiles, photos, friends and network from other Google sites like Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader and Picasa.

With so much to offer and Gmail as a huge advantage, Google is all set to take on Facebook headon. Facebook on the other hand is still struggling on finding a clear business model. With its many recent updates claiming better features and user friendliness, the user experience has just gone from bad to worse. None better! But then on the other hand, not all products of Google have clicked. Anyone uses Google Wave or Orkut still? Well, most would have not even heard of Google Wave.

Many Facebook addicts are seriously concerned about Google Buzz. Google as you know is a money making machine and can make money out of any object that it steps on; even without the objects notice. Facebook users are posting messages asking Facebook to take some immediate steps:

1. Stop any synchronization with Google or its products
2. Do not allow Google to post any updates or info on any Facebook channel
3. Do not allow Google to crawl Facebook or gather any info on Facebook to publish on Google’s channels
4. Start a free web mail service like Google for Facebook users.
5. And many more..

Google’s Buzz has become a thing of hatred to Facebook lovers more than for Facebook itself. On the other hand, Google Buzz does not seem to be that much interesting to Gmail users. Just a interesting icon on their left hand gmail menu. Lets wait to see how much interesting this Google Buzz is to the social media world.

It’s time you spice up your Facebook profile page with your favorite artists, songs and bands. There are a whole lot of music apps available for free to help you make your profile page look cooler and more interactive.

Here is a list of the top 5 apps that you can integrate with Facebook platform.

Last.FM Music – This is an official app from Last.FM Facebook that helps you create your favorite playlist, compare with other music and also interact and share them with your friends. This is one of the most commonly used music app for Facebook.

iLike – iLike is another widely used Facebook app and has a whole lot of features in it. You can add artists, videos, bands, concerts and many more. You can share, comment and also create a personalized playlist of your favorite songs. Not just that, it lets you also see who are your friends favorite artists, which concert they are going to and you can even invite your favourite band to come to your town. This iLike may sure overtake Last.FM sooner as many cool features are being added on to it regularly.

My Music – This is the best for anyone who is addicted to iTunes. You can access your entire iTunes library with this little app in just a few clicks. Isn’t that awesome!

Yahoo Music Videos – import a whole lot of music videos into your Facebook profile from the massive Yahoo Video database.

Pandora – Pandora is for U.S users alone as it has been removed for outsiders due to licensing issues. However, if you are residing in U.S, it’s a great way to find your favourite songs and artists and add them to Facebook.

Many artists now have a presence in Facebook and have their songs shared on it. Facebook is a great way to share your music to the world. Many have even ended up with record deals and have grown their musical career out of it. Though we need to add a third-party music application to Facebook, there are some pretty cool apps like iLike and Last.fm that let you share your music easily to your profile.

So how do you add your music to Facebook? Here are few steps which can help you add music to Facebook at ease.

1. First and foremost, create a Facebook account if you don’t have one. (https://register.facebook.com/r.php )
2. Now create your band’s Facebook page.
3. Now click on http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/… Or any other music application you prefer. Allow it to access your profile.
4. Now you land on a page which has a whole lot of features for you to use. You can search for artists, search songs, videos, concerts, free MP3s and many more. You can get all these published on your profile. Isn’t that amazing?
5. Here you see a tab, My Music, where you can upload your own music too.
6. Now navigate to your profile and click on the ‘+’ icon on the top and select ‘♫ Music’
7. You are done now. Enjoy sharing your music to the world!

There are quite a lot of other music applications for facebook. Check the list of music applications for Facebook here!

A recent report by Simply Hired, LinkedIn’s job search portal, reveals through its Employment Trends that jobs on Facebook has increased by 635 percent. Interestingly, MySpace jobs have decreased by 27 percent. LinkedIn also had a substantial growth of 125% jobs while social networking sites did not see an increase in jobs and stayed at the previous 22%.

The data was derived from millions of jobs indexed by Simply Hired a popular job search engine. The graph below depicts the increase and decrease.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Facebook today announced that Donald E. Graham, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of The Washington Post Company , has agreed to join its board of directors next month. Read the full story

Lindsay Lohan has been blocked from accessing her own Facebook account as the site administrator thought it was just another fake account. Writing on her MySpace account, Lohan mentioned to her fans that though initially she laughed out, she was ‘shocked’ and red faced. Read the full story

The new SmartSpace from GoDaddy can help even an internet dummy to create a site at ease which has photo galleries, email addresses, chat rooms and a blog. That’s what SmartSpace claims in its caption, “Be live on the web immediately with an instantly connected domain!”

SmartSpace offers a free blog tool, a free photo site and free social space once you order a domain name with SmartSpace at Godaddy. Social space is an application by Smart Space which can be used to collect and display dynamic information from Flicker, YouTube, Google News and Facebook profiles.

The tool has a clean and simple interface as it caters to users who are not technically sound. The tool guides the user step by step based on the features requested. The only requirement needed from the user would be to choose the layouts, color preferences and customize it. That’s not a big requirement and hey it’s your website and you need to decide them.

The SmartSpace feature can be accessed by logging in using your regular username and password. With many new domain sellers and hosting providers arraying into the market, hosting providers have to provide additional features with little or no cost to hold on to their existing customers.

Scrabulous would no longer be accessible to users except in India. The restriction is due to the case being held in the Indian High Court.

Most of the Facebook users are aware that Scrabulous cannot be accessed in Facebook. The popular game developed by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta is a game similar to Scrabble. Interestingly, Scrabble owns the rights outside North America and Hasbro another company owns the right to Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada.

Following the complaints and court proceedings, Facebook has replaced Scrabulous with a similar game called Wordscraper. Wordscraper is no different than Scrabulous except that it uses circles instead of boxes.

The most famous application on Facebook is disappearing in many countries. A search for Scrabulous results in a message stating that “We’re sorry, but this application is not available to you. Please visit the Application Directory to find other applications.

Scrabulous, developed by the Agarwalla brothers had good popularity among the gaming community. However, it has created issues with Mattel who own the rights for Scrabble a similar game outside North America.

The Agarwalla developers commented in Facebook stating:

“Sometime on 22nd August, Facebook took the unfortunate decision to restrict most users from accessing Scrabulous. This was in response to Mattel sending them a “take down notice” on 14th August.

Mattel itself had approached the Indian Courts in February 2008, seeking an order for taking down Scrabulous from Facebook and other servers. The Hon’ble High Court has reserved judgment in this matter after hearing both parties. It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the Hon’ble High Court’s decision. Mattel’s action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary.

It is even more astonishing that Facebook, which claims to be a fair and neutral party, took this step even though they were fully aware of the circumstances under which the Mattel letter was sent to them.

We now await the decision of the Hon’ble High Court and shall accordingly decide our future course of action with regard to Scrabulous.

We wish to thank our fans for their continued support and hope to give them the best results sooner than later.”

It looks like Facebook is removing the game one country after another.