This past November, a partnership between Microsoft and LinkedIn was announced. This partnership integrates your LinkedIn Professional Network right within your Microsoft Outlook Inbox.

Bringing this network into your inbox is a solid extension to the power of LinkedIn and offers several benefits:

1. Keep track of what your LinkedIn connections are working on and thinking about - See the latest activity for any LinkedIn connection who e-mails you right at the bottom of that e-mail. See who they are connecting with, the articles they are reading and sharing, and the questions they are asking and answering.

2. Get the latest contact information for your professional connections -Contact information stored on LinkedIn will start appearing in an Outlook Contacts folder named "LinkedIn" - so now you'll always have the latest contact information from LinkedIn close at hand.
3. Grow your LinkedIn network with ease -Click the green "Add" icon next to any email sender to easily invite them to join your professional network on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is excited about launching this service and hopes that some of the benefits of LinkedIn will start to be seen in your Microsoft Outlook inbox. This functionality is still in Beta, so LinkedIn is eager to get any feedback on issues, problems, or features you may have.

For more information on this, check out LinkedIn's blog: http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/02/17/linkedin-microsoft-outlook/