Microsoft has just announced that Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, has started a new group focused on social computing.  The new group is called the Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs, which includes approximately 80 people from Microsoft’s Creative Systems Group, Rich Media Labs and Startup Labs.  Microsoft veteran, Lili Cheng, will run FUSE Labs from Redmond, Wash.

In an e-mail to Microsoft employees Ozzie explains the Labs role:

“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.”

FUSE will be tasked with driving “social” initiatives across all of Microsoft’s product groups aggressively trying to position the tech giant as a leader in the “Enterprise 2.0″ (basically taking the fundamental elements of social media to the enterprise).  This is a nice gesture by Microsoft, but isn’t it a bit too late?  Plus, its always been Microsoft’s motivation to ONLY introduce products and services it can charge for day one – a bit anti-social media.  Nevertheless, a big move from the 800-lbs gorilla in the Pacific Northwest.

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