Future Social Experiences Labs or FUSE is the new organization within Microsoft that has been in the news lately. They are a product of consolidating three independent research labs under Microsoft: Creative Systems Group, Startup Lab and Rich Media Lab. Under Lili Cheng, the newly appointed General Manager of FUSE, they have been able to roll out the integration of Twitter with Bing in less than a month of FUSE’s formation. Lili Cheng has been in Microsoft for over 14 years, and according to her the goal of FUSE is the “bridge the gap” between research and product deployment.

“Interacting with other people is so personal and emotional to every single person out there. It’s important for every company out there.” said Cheng.

And Lili Cheng comes ably qualified to lead FUSE. According to Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, “I’ve known Lili for many years, and have long been impressed by her vision and ability to create; to engage yet to also inspire; to lead; to make tough choices; to deliver.”

With technology changing so rapidly, they are faced with the task of getting products out into the market early so they can assess the potential of different social tools. Dealing with social sites like Facebook, Twitter etc., is the key focus of FUSE at present. FUSE will work with Microsoft in different departments from Bing to Xbox, depending on their product needs.

Predicting how the future of social communication will look is getting harder and harder. This inherent rapid changing behavior of social computing is the primary reason why FUSE was put in place.  Coming up with products that fit social communication into Microsoft’s products in the shortest time frame is the challenge they face. As users we can hope for some interesting tools that could come out of this group of Microsofties.