Outlook + Twitter = OutTwit
If you are an Outlook user, you probably have it open all the time. Now you can update your Twitter status and follow your friends without having to open any other applications. OutTwit seamlessly integrates Twitter into Outlook.
Context & Ripple Effects
OutTwit arrives two weeks after Xobni's pitch to turn Outlook into a social network, and both bets rest on the same premise: the inbox is where knowledge workers already live, so social features should come to it rather than wait in a browser tab. For Twitter specifically, this is the third distribution push in recent months — it opened address-book importing in September and put its stream inside the MTV Video Music Awards in August.
The pattern across that coverage is a young service leaning on other people's real estate to reach mainstream users. OutTwit extends that from partnerships into tooling: anyone with the Outlook habit gets Twitter without adopting a new application.
First-order effects
- Outlook's large installed base becomes reachable by Twitter through an add-in, letting users post updates and follow friends inside the client they keep open all day.
Second-order effects
- Xobni's social-Outlook thesis now has company, pressuring the space around Outlook add-ins and inviting Microsoft to decide whether social integration is a partner ecosystem or a native feature.
Third-order effects
- If the add-in model holds, microblogging competes on embedding depth inside productivity software rather than on standalone clients — making the openness of a service's API the gate on how far third parties like OutTwit can carry it.
The trend: Microblogging services are distributing themselves through the desktop applications users already keep open, turning Outlook into a contested social layer.