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If you have had trouble keeping up with multiple email accounts, multiple social media accounts and the rest of your online life, you may have longed for some way to sort out the chaos. FriendFeed came along to help aggregate your social media stream, but it left email and the like out in the cold. Now, there is Fuser to help handle the task.
Fuser is a simple web based application that has an email like interface for viewing all of the accounts you associate with it. I am not a fan of the email interface, but I am a huge fan of the idea. I spent a few days showing Fuser to other social media power users, and the feedback was predominantly positive.
You simply go to the website at Fuser.com and click sign up. The company has opened its beta to the public now (it was in private beta for a while), so you should have no trouble getting your account up and running.
My main complaints are interface and social media variety. I am not a huge fan of an email-style interface in general, but it is glaringly missing a few key components for customizing your email accounts. It defaults to “leave messages on server”, which is a good thing, and you can choose which email is the default account for sending messages. After that, it is is a touch too simplistic for my heavy usage needs.
I tend to hyper-customize each of my many email accounts using Thunderbird so that I can ensure all of the various recipients of email from each address see the same things. Not being able to do that is a drawback for me, but may not bother others. I also had some trouble getting Fuser to accept all of my emails. Specifically, the emails that go with each of my many domains just would not load, though they are POP and IMAP emails, and Fuser says it is compatible. The web based emails (GMail, Yahoo, etc) and Comcast loaded perfectly well, however.
Moving on the social media aspects of Fuser, it is currently very limited in scope. It only accepts Facebook, MySpace and Twitter at the moment. I also use LinkedIn, Flickr and others heavily and would love to have more added to the interface. The email style interaction may not be what I’d choose for daily use, but having everything in one place as a time saver would trump that for me.
Overall, I think Fuser is quite useful for people who need a way to go to one place for all of their social inbox needs. It is in beta, so I will keep checking back and see if they add customization and functionality to it to make it more useful for a picky heavy user like myself. Meanwhile, it is worth a look. Social media applications are very personal, and you may find Fuser social inbox management ideal for the way you use social media and email.
Leslie Poston is a writer, social media guide and tech junkie. In addition to writing about all things tech, she conducts social media training sessions to help you bring your company into World 2.0 using social media and technology and is the founder of Uptown Uncorked.
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Thanks for the write-up Leslie, we appreciate your honest feedback. I’m sorry you had trouble with your POP and IMAP email accounts, that sounds like a bug we’d like to get to the bottom of if you’re willing to help. Just drop us a note at support at fuser dot com and Kevin will follow-up to find out more details.
What email customization features would make Fuser more valuable for your power-use?
We hear you loud and clear on more social web site support, and LinkedIn is top of our list. You mentioned Flickr, but what other services would be valuable for you in Fuser?
I’m happy to help, but a bit swamped for the next day or so. Let me drop you a note at the end of the week regarding all of your questions.