James Fell writing on the Wall Blog has developed some of the themes from my LinkedIn workshop last week. One area that really caught my eye are his comments on social connector applications. These are tools that enable you to make connections between your various social networks.

“Stephen mentions about that you can proactively use Xobni, a product that Bill Gates described as “the next generation of social networking” (in 2008), which is probably why Microsoft created Outlook Social Connector (OSC) as new feature offered as part of Office 2010.”

“[It] allows you to collaborate Outlook with not only LinkedIn but Facebook, MySpace and Windows LiveSpaces allowing for a much more rounded social experience connecting directly with your Address Book.”

James also reviews other third party solutions designed to support your LinkedIn efforts.

“One that I recently came across is a company based out of San Francisco called Flowtown, a social media marketing tool that helps businesses transform email contacts into engaged customers. Flowtown analyses your company’s marketing data (by the thousand) to show you who the key influencers across LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are online and engage with them accordingly.”

Thanks James. And thanks to Chris Lee for this post which led James to discover my ‘Getting more out of LinkedIn’ slidedeck.