Microsoft’s microblogging offering OfficeTalk may never see the light of day, but the company is adding Facebook-like social interface to cloud-hosted version of its Microsoft Dynamics product. The new feature, called Activity Feeds, was reported by CRM Buyer earlier this month, and pointed out today by Mary Jo Foley.

Microsoft Dynamics is being offered as a cloud-hosted platform in direct competition with Salesforce.com and the addition of social features brings it further in line with Salesforce.com’s service. Here’s a screenshot found on CRM Buyer:

Foley reports that an Activity Feeds app will be available for Windows Phone 7 as well.

Salesforce.com added its micrblogging/activity stream product Chatter to Salesforce.com last year. The company claims that it is the company’s fastest growing product. Both Qontext and TIBCO tibbr also offer an activity stream integration for Salesforce.com. Sonoma Partners already offers an activity stream/social network integration for Microsoft Dynamics called Vibe.

Services Angle

Our Alex Williams recently called microblogging and activity streams the new information cortex for the enterprise. Activity streams are best thought of as a simple UI innovation that can improve communication between workers, between departments and even between companies, as well as make it easier for individual workers to aggregate streams of information.

Microsoft is a late entrant enterprise social media, unless of course you count SharePoint. But the real power of activity streams comes from direct integration with existing production software, so Activity Feed is certainly a step forward for Microsoft. It will also help Microsoft better compete with other cloud CRM providers like Salesforce.com, SAP Sales OnDemand and SugarCRM.