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Masterclass interview by Michael Moon with Rudy Thurston, Chief Operating Officer at Omnifuse, on developing social media infrastructure for networked consumers

Professional background

Rudy Thurston has decade of experience developing infrastructure and software architecture to Omnifuse’s clients. Before co-founding Omnifuse, Rudy served as the enterprise open-systems configuration management director for the Automobile Club of Southern California, where he oversaw the source code and build automation of mission-critical business applications. Previously, Rudy owned a consulting company developing software solutions for many FORTUNE 100 companies, including Microsoft and its Windows 2000 operating system development. Rudy holds a bachelor’s degree in business with an emphasis in economics from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in engineering in Applied Computer Science from the University of Southern California. A former competitive tennis player, Rudy works today with youth tennis programs to pass along his vast knowledge and experience in the sport.

MM: So as we start this, why don’t you just start off with your name, title and an overview in terms of Omnifuse?

RT: Sure. My name is Rudy Thurston. I’m the COO of Omnifuse, a social media marketing and technology company that started in earnest in 2003. We’ve been working on our social media platform for a little over seven years, now. Almost going into eight years, now.

MM: As a social media developer, this means that you develop a technical platform and license, or provide it to other companies?

RT: Yes. That’s one facet of our business. Our flagship product is FUSION. That’s a traditional social networking application.

We also provide strategy consulting for clients who already have existing social networks, where we help them with memberships. We help them with identifying their target demographics, and inflection points of social media into their social networks, to get more excitement, or to drive more specific types of traffic to their communities.

We specialize in building communities. Whether we’re using the technology that we created to build those communities, or using our community expertise to continue to build those communities.

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