Fuser – Integrating Email and Social Networks
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Whether the majority of us will openly admit it or not, it is a fact that the new generation just entering the workforce has evolved out of “old” ways of communications (like.. er.. email for instance) and has found a much more relevant communication platform on social networks, and following social graphs and lifestreams.
Social networks such as Facebook are, or will invariably be, a part of the future of communications between companies, partners or individuals.
Fuser in an interesting service that is helping people accept this fact and evolve into the new paradigm — it helps integrate all of your email and social networking accounts into one easily accessible inbox.
This is similar to Orgoo, but the Facebook integration will be important for a number of reasons. First of all, it would let you use a regular email client to access and reply to Facebook or MySpace messages, overcoming the limitations with their built-in ones. Secondly, it will let Fuser perform better analytics on your emails, to hopefully integrate functionality similar to Xobni in the future.
They already have a Leaderboard feature which is a step in that direction — it tells you who sends you messages most frequently.
I haven’t been able to test is long enough to know how good the service is with Spam — can someone from the community test these guys to see if the integration of social networks and email is a successful combination?
9:48 am
In my opinion it may not be as popular or used as extensively for message integration. One goes to Facebook or Myspace to have a personal virtual presence in a virtual community that has “community like features”. Taking Fuser any where ahead in creating that unified community environment won’t do any good since it will then become a duplication of what exists already.
I am really looking forward to Fuser for what they intend to tackle this issue.
9:49 am
One aspect of it may have the driving potential not as much for extensive usage but yes for social networking since one will be able to trace friends with one keyword search across all social platforms.
I think this is where the real strength of the idea lies.
10:11 am
And on the basis of which Fuser may have killer plans for membership migration from Facebook (FB) and MySpace(MyS) to its own community. This sounds an alert for FB and MyS!
Does this new wave for integration mean blockout for such services to access the liberal world of the e-communities?
12:43 am
Thanks for the write-up on Fuser. We’re really excited about our open Beta launch and are looking forward to hearing everyone’s feedback. We’ve gone to great efforts to ensure that the functionality you like in your email clients is available in Fuser, which includes Spam filtering. Thanks again!
9:18 am
[Emily]…Hey how about a product insight?!
9:27 am
I think gmail is already giving what users want in terms of aggragation of multi-box incoming messages including the following:
Its all about friendly navigation:
———————————-
1. Thread based message relationing
2. Text-below/Message-below marker
3. Collapsible/Expandable message thread view
4. Search by title/sender/bodytext
5. Realtime in-mail refresh
6. Top news update slot
7. Online friends Status
8. Chatbox integration
9. Many other features
Its all about access:
———————
1. Gmail for mobile
2. Mail notification in chat console
Must be really innovative and not only the same features in a new format and color for Fuser to be truly appreciated and accepted as a preferred option.
4:12 am
@Muhammad Asif Razzaque — Thanks for all of your thoughts on this. We definitely are not replacing the social networking experience, that’s a space that Facebook and Myspace have nearly mastered, and we think that the value that comes from the social interaction on those sites is irreplaceable. Because of the value of these sites, we wanted to offer a tool that makes managing your communication within Facebook and Myspace a bit easier. In Fuser you can read your messages, wall posts, comments and bulletins while you’re checking your email, thereby allowing users to manage their communications from many different networks and email accounts in one place.
To your last post, Gmail does a great job of aggregating POP email, but that doesn’t cover all the ways that users are communicating. If your mail account isn’t POP, then you can’t read it in Gmail, and Gmail doesn’t support the social channels.
Give Fuser a try and let me know what you think!
5:38 am
Is there a way to locate someone locally to try this?
2:53 am
This is right here, in the present, not the future.