Going soft on social
Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, says he's put together a team to work on "social" technologies.
The team will work in the newly formed Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Lab, melded together from the firm's Creative Systems Group, Rich Media Labs and Startup Labs under the authority of Lili Cheng, a long time researcher of social technologies at the company. Cheng, previously the director of the Creative Systems Group within Microsoft Research, will now assume the position of general manager of FUSE Labs, reporting directly to Ozzie.
The news emerged from an internal Microsoft memo by Ozzie and leaked to several online news outlets. In it he writes that the "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 and entertainment; productivity and teamwork; experiences extending how we use the OS itself."
"FUSE Labs' team will explore new social, real-time and media-rich applications and services that add value to existing products, or could be released on their own," he writes.
FUSE labs will count some 80 employees and Ozzie says "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."
He added that 'social,' has now transcended entertainment, productivity and teamwork to become part of the operating system itself.
Ozzie also expressed the hope Microsoft's social sandbox would "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."
