I have to say that the power of SOA applications is simply, endless. As part of the Lotus Connections RedWiki, one of the authors has just documented how to integrate Lotus Connections Profiles with external social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Skype, and Facebook.
Oh and the best part? The integration just can't be any simpler. How simple? Well, all it takes is 1 line of code per service! That's right. All it takes to integrate Lotus Connections Profiles and LinkedIn, for example, is modify 1 file and add 1 line of code to 1 file. You have to agree with me that that's pretty darn cool!
But wait, it gets better!
We just added this integration to the person card, right? Now remember that the person card can be added to any web or rich client application regardless of which technology is being used: ASP, JSP, PHP, Java, .NET, C++, etc.. So think of al the places where a name appears and you most likely can add the person card. As an example, the person card already works (out of the box) with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Notes, Sametime, Quickr, and Symphony.
Based on experience, most enterprises are deploying the person card with either Confluence Wikis, Microsoft Sharepoint, Quickr and/or WebSphere Portal. Therefore, by adding that 1 line of code from above, you are integrating all of Confluence Wikis, Microsoft Sharepoint, Quickr and WebSphere Portal to external social networking sites. Now that's value added!! If you remember, that's how Lotus Connections helped integrate Confluence Wikis and Microsoft Sharepoint at a customer a couple of months ago.
Take a look at the RedWiki instructions for other things you can do with the person card.