As Gmail users continue to grapple with the Google email service's integration of its new Buzz social networking tool, Microsoft says it has signed up Facebook and MySpace to integrate with its Outlook email program through the Outlook Social Connector feature announced by the Redmond company in November.

Business-oriented social network LinkedIn, which had already announced plans to connect to the new Outlook feature, simultaneously released a preliminary version of that plugin, which lets people send messages from Outlook to LinkedIn contacts and see status updates from their LinkedIn network in the email program.

LinkedIn says the plugin will work with Outlook 2003, 2007 and the Outlook 2010 beta. Microsoft executive Will Kennedy tells the Associated Press that the Facebook and MySpace plugins will be available by the time Outlook 2010 is released in June.

Downloads: Outlook Social Connector, and LinkedIn plugin.

The developments illustrate the different approaches being taken by Microsoft and Google as they try to bridge the worlds of email and social networks. Google Buzz connects to sites including Twitter, but in many ways it represents a new social network of its own. Microsoft is aiming more to take advantage the momentum behind existing social networks by integrating them into the Outlook interface.

Similar features are already offered by the Outlook plugin Xobni. Seattle-based Gist, backed by Paul Allen, also brings together email, contacts, social-networking feeds and other data, but its CEO, T.A. McCann, has downplayed the competitive implications of the Microsoft Outlook Social Connector.

There's more information about today's news in this video on Microsoft's Channel 9 site. And here's a video demo from LinkedIn showing how its Outlook Social Connector plugin works.