I think the announcement was a setup, but not the person who asked the question. It was pretty obvious that someone was going to ask that question, you could bet on it.

The person writes this:

>Skepticism be damned, I'm actually an actual person who asked an actual question. I saw on Twitter that Outlook.com would be doing an AMA, and nobody asked the IMAP question yet, so I did. I've been a lurker on Reddit for several years.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1m926j/we_are_the_outl...

Now, it's possible it's an employee, but I wouldn't rate it as "most certainly" like you did, it was obvious that someone was going to ask this question.