Last night, I went to the Fuser open house in downtown Boulder. Fuser is the first product from Confluence Commons (founded by Jared Polis) which has been stealthily cranking for about a year now.
I’ve been using the product to “unify my email” since the first alpha about 4 months ago. Disclosure: I was on the technical advisory board at Fuser, but I am not an investor.
I can certainly see the use for it if you have a bunch of email and social messaging accounts in a bunch of places and would like one interface for everything.
The challenge, obviously, is that this unified interface has to be just as good or better than what you’re using today. That can be a pretty high bar.
But judge the progress for yourself. Colorado Startups readers have been invited by the company to participate in the closed beta version. You’ll need the registration code “costartups” to gain access during the sign up process. Sign up quickly, because they’ll only allow the first 100 users to gain access. All they ask in return is your feedback. Note: Mac users need to use Safari instead of Firefox, for now.
Fuser is a fun company and a great addition to the downtown Boulder startup scene. I’m anxious to see where this goes and how fast. Thanks Fuser! We had a great time playing Guitar Hero and trying to name the robot mascot.
You’re dead right on the experience. Since every email I own all goes to my GMail (where I can no only receive but send from those addresses) there is little incentive to switch.
And adding Facebook isn’t that useful. It emails me with my activity, right? It’s still all going to one place.
Hey, it’s Jeff with Fuser here.
I totally agree that a powerful and easy user experience is crucial. Fuser has the ability to unify a virtually unlimited number of email and social networking accounts, and so we’ve given thought about how best to represent this to the user. For example, one thing we do is let the user filter which accounts they want to see. Devin, we’d love feedback from you about what else you’d like to see. What are your thoughts?
Also, with regard to Gmail’s ability to grab email from other accounts, it is limited to only POP3 accounts. It doesn’t support IMAP or web interfaces. This may not sounds like a big deal, but this means they can’t pull email from AOL, MSN, free Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, etc.
Now, of course, in some cases you can forward email to Gmail. But not all accounts will forward. And, forwarded email can’t be replied to from the initial email service. I know Gmail allows you to spoof the From email address to look like it comes from the initial service, but this can cause problems with spam filters that check to see that the sending email domain is the same as the domain in the From email address.
Fuser bypasses all these issues by giving the user a tool to actually use the underlying accounts for sending and receiving email. Fuser is just a reflection of whats in the underlying accounts.
Further, while you may be technically adept enough to set up Gmail in the fashion you describe, lots of folks arent. Trust me, my mother/father would be quickly lost trying to set up what youve done. With Fuser, all a user has to do is enter their email addresses and passwords for each account and we take care of the rest for them. Very easy.
With regard to Facebook activity emails, I also typically receive them without problems. But, for some reason I dont receive the same emails from MySpace anymore. Ive checked my spam filters and theyre not getting caught there. So, for me its cool that Fuser can read these communications directly I dont have to trust that the activity emails will reach me.
Finally, Fusers ability to reflect Facebook emails is just the start. Stay tuned for new features that are based on the Facebook and MySpace services.
We are open to any and all feedback especially constructive criticism. Please put your thoughts into the Fuser forum.
Thanks.