Lili Cheng

Microsoft has tapped Lili Cheng to lead a new group to develop and explore technologies around social computing.The lab -- dubbed Future Social Experience or FUSE -- will consist of Microsoft's pre-existing MSR Creative Systems along with Rich Media Labs and Cambridge, Mass.-based Startup Labs.

Cheng, who previously led MSR Creative Systems, is an expert in social computing and a 14-year Microsoft veteran of Microsoft. She will report directly to Ray Ozzie, the chief software architect at Microsoft.

[Post updated with an excerpt from Ozzie's memo on the changes]

Cheng joined Microsoft in 1995 as part of the Virtual Worlds group, going on to lead the user experience team for Windows Vista. She's also worked on projects such as Wallop and VChat.

The new group -- which consists of 82 people -- plans to focus on real-time, media-rich applications and services that could be offered as new products or attached to existing products. Employees will remain in their current locations, a spokesman said.

As part of the changes, Reed Sturtevant -- who led Startup Labs in Cambridge, Mass. and previously served as CT of Eons -- has decided to pursue other opportunities, reports Mass High Tech.

[Side note: Cheng will be one of the panelists at the upcoming TechFlash Live: Women in Tech event slated for October 28. More on that later this week].

UPDATE: Here's an excerpt from Ray Ozzie's internal memo on the formation of FUSE:

For many years, technology-based ‘social’ innovations have been most commonly viewed through the lenses of communications and collaboration: messaging, chat, calls, meetings, conferences, co-editing, document sharing, collaboration, multiplayer gaming and the like.

More recently, many factors have begun to transform all that which is ‘social’: the ever-present, high-bandwidth internet both wired and wireless; the ease of connecting people; the dramatic rise in digital cameras, camera phones and ‘app-capable’ phones; net-connected game consoles & TVs; and so on.

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.