The idea of social media within the corporate world just got a great big shot in the arm with the announcement from Ray Ozzie about the creation of Future Social Experience (FUSE) Labs. Headed by Lillian Cheng, and reporting directly to Ozzie, the FUSE labs will combine three labs: The Creative System Group, Rich Media Labs, and Startup Labs.
In an email to Microsoft employees Ray Ozzie was pretty clear about Microsoft’s social media direction and the importance of it to the company.
Myriad scenarios involving the notion of ‘social’ have now gone far beyond communications and collaboration and are transforming experiences that are key to our customers and key to our business, in leisure & entertainment; productivity & teamwork; experiences extending how we use the OS itself.
The three groups being combined have concrete skills and code in areas where ‘social’ meets sharing; where ‘social’ meets real-time; where ‘social’ meets media; where ‘social’ meets search; where ‘social’ meets the cloud plus three screens and a world of devices.
FUSE Labs will bring more coherence and capability to those advanced development projects where they’re already actively collaborating with product groups to help them succeed with ‘leapfrog’ efforts. Working closely with (Microsoft Research) and across our divisions, the lab will prioritize efforts where its capabilities can be applied to areas where the company’s extant missions, structures, tempo or risk might otherwise cause us to miss a material threat or opportunity.
(courtesy of ReadWriteWeb)
While much of the consumer market in the world of ‘social’ is centered around hot young startups with their VC payrolls when it comes to the enterprise market companies aren’t looking for ‘hot’ – their looking for stability. With Microsoft staking its claim in this section of the ‘social’ world companies will get that stability and possibly be more open to a ‘social business’ world.
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