I have written about why you need to change your Facebook profile picture but, after the events of last week, I felt I HAD to send out a reminder again.
Your Facebook Profile picture can be seen by millions of Outlook users every time you send out an email… even if you’re not connected to them in Facebook.
For those who don’t know yet, Microsoft recently released a new (free) connector to users that lets other people see your Facebook profile picture (and status information) right inside Outlook.
That’s right! People can see your Facebook picture inside Outlook…. they do NOT need to be your friend in Facebook… they don’t even need to be logged in to Facebook.
As soon as they receive an email from you, Outlook will show them your current Facebook Profile picture like this:
This feature is available in Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 which at the time of writing is probably 99% of all Outlook users.
Now the story of why I felt I had to write this article again… I recently received an email sent to me on behalf of a Board Member of a prominent charity organization. The email was sent by her secretary.
When I viewed the email inside Outlook, the secretary’s picture was displayed to me. The picture, while not obscene in any way, was not a good image for the secretary, the board member or the organization. It was fine for her personal friends but definitely not in a professional context.
I was not logged in to Facebook and I was not a Facebook friend of the sender. In fact it turned out that she wasn’t even using that Facebook account any more.
I’ve emailed her and she has since changed her picture but the picture could have left me with an extremely bad first impression of her.
If you use Facebook… go right now and make sure that your profile picture projects a professional image that you are happy with.
Finally if you haven’t tried it yet, you can get Outlook to display Facebook pictures using the connector from this link. It works in Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010.