No degree of separation: social networking creates endless connections for business.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: [Q3 TECH REPORT] - Technical report

The water cooler just isn't what it used to be. Nowadays, office gossip isn't the only game in town, with a slew of social-networking websites offering users the means to create a custom profile and instantly communicate with friends--real and imagined--all over the world.

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From the entertainment-oriented My Space and Facebook to the business-savvy LinkedIn and Plaxo, dozens of social-networking sites are creating new ways to interact on the Web, and more and more users--and uses--emerge every day. An emerging mobile niche led by Twitter integrates cell phones and location (see this issue's Tech Startup of the Month on Brightkite on page 58 for an example).

To be sure, some of these uses are terrific business tools--namely in the areas of marketing, human resources, knowledge management and networking. And to be certain, many other uses are purely social or entertainment, terrific for employees to take their productivity down a notch.

"You have to have sensible policies," says Eric Wu, director of project management at Fuser, a Boulder-based startup that consolidates a user's e-mail accounts and social-networking streams into one convenient home page. "I have heard about companies that are concerned about people wasting time."

Fuser has an open policy, says Wu, noting, "Our president says this is one of the few jobs where you can get paid to play on MySpace." Of Fuser's 28 employees, Wu gladly admits some are in the "addict realm" when it comes to social networking, with Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and Linkedln being the most popular sites.

But the open policy is not a drag on the company's productivity--Wu finds it has the opposite effect.

"It lowers the barrier for communication with customers and communicating within the company itself/' he says. "Being a startup, we've got a lot of work to do. We don't see people's productivity declining."

As its name subtly implies, Fuser's business model is based on bringing productivity to its users' online communication by fusing their various social-networking profiles and e-mail addresses. "At some point, it becomes overwhelming," says Wu, who says his Fuser offers a convenient way to bring the constantly expanding universe of social media back into one small world.

"It's hard to manage 12 communication streams," he says. "We hear, 'I''ve got three e-mail accounts and I'd like to have one, but there's two addresses I can't get rid of.' Fuser takes care of that problem. From...