Voiceroute Pte Ltd, the folks behind Socialwok, have launched Socialwok Outlook Social Connector for Office 2010, 2007, and 2003 today. Socialwok is the service which allows you to easily connect and collaborate with your co-workers. Use your existing email address to to create a private social network to share ideas, emails, files, documents, and other rich media using status updates.
“Socialwok is committed to bringing the power of social networking technologies like passive sharing to small and medium-size businesses (SMBs). There are many SMBs on the Microsoft Office platform already using Microsoft Outlook for everyday messaging. As such, it is a logical choice for us to integrate with Microsoft Outlook 2010 especially since this version of Outlook includes native support for social networking. We are excited about bringing business social sharing and collaboration to Outlook”, says Ming Yong, Socialwok CEO.
This is a very exciting announcement for Socialwok as it only marks the beginning of a much greater strategy. According to Ming, Microsoft will soon become the dominant player as far as cloud-based office productivity applications goes. This is very likely since Microsoft already has a stronghold in the desktop arena and is including free cloud services with it’s latest Office 2010 release. “By working closely with Microsoft, my company aims to realize our vision of being the largest business social collaboration network for cloud based office productivity in the world.”, says Ming Yong, Socialwok CEO.
“Using Microsoft’s suite of developer tools like Microsoft Visual Studio and Outlook Social Connector, software vendors like Voiceroute are helping us build a rich ecosystem of third-party applications that work seamlessly with Office 2010. Office Web Apps is a key platform for taking the work done on Office by 500 million around the world into the cloud. Engaging and encouraging vendors like Voiceroute to develop cloud-based social collaboration services that integrate with Office 2010 is an excellent demonstration of our continued commitment to bring the benefits of cloud computing to the masses across the browser, the phone or the desktop.” – Haresh Khoobchandani, Senior Director, Business Marketing Organization for Microsoft Singapore
Not only is this a big step for Socialwok, but it seems that Microsoft has definitely realized the social web is important for their success. Not only that, but they see the power of leveraging a “rich ecosystem of third-party applications.” Third-party developers have been a driving force behind the social web. This is especially true for Twitter. In addition to Apple’s App Store, there is the Google Apps Marketplace, Foursquare’s new marketplace, and many others.