This looks pretty interesting – Microsoft Signs Letter Of Intent To Acquire Xobni in TechCrunch today.

Bill Gates has publicly complimented the service, calling it “the next generation of social networking.”

Xobni, which launched at the TechCrunch40 conference last year, offers an outlook plugin for Windows users that significantly improves the desktop email experience (particularly search). They recently hired notable Yahoo’er Jeff Bonforte as CEO.

I use Outlook at work, but not at home, so I’ll not use it at home but I looked at the movie demo of Xobni and I like what I saw – but I’ll have to wait till I’m invited to the Beta to actually try Xobni.