Google released Google Plus to keep up with the flourishing social trend, but nothing seemed to come from the Micrsoft’s quarters. Thus, some might have gotten the idea that Microsoft just went extinct on social networks ideas and has no plan of doing something to remedy the situation.
Well, it turns out, they couldn’t be more wrong, because apparently, Microsoft was recently rumored to be working on a social project called Tulalip, according to details found on a splash page that was published accidentally to Socl.com. Ooops!
The people at The Verge managed to get quite a good look at the service and it seems that it’s not going to be your average Facebook/Myspace, but a mix of search, discovery and the wonderful features of social network. The Verge editors also claim that Microsoft decided to name the project Socl, instead of Tulalip, dumping that name in the dustbin. Now if you visit the page all you get is a message that reads: “Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest.”
But what did the leaks tell us? Users can sign in via Twitter or Facebook and the design is reminiscent of Windows Phone tiles aka Metro UI. And everything on this social network seems to revolve around searching. Even your status updates are intimately tied up to whatever you search for in Socl (which uses Bing as well). Friends can comment on your search queries, like them and even tag them. Other options include video party, a video sharing features that lets you and your friends watch videos together.
There’s yet no word of the launch, and there’s still a slight chance the project may not even see the light of day. In any case, the baby social network is going to be having a hard time borrowing users from already huge Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Will it be worth the try?