

Microsoft opens its own social network - bretthellman
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/05/tech/social-media/microsoft-socl-social-network/index.html

======
lmkg
This is a research project out of MSR, not a product out of Microsoft proper.
I'm still not exactly sure what it is that they're researching ("social
search"? ¯\\(°_o)/¯), but it does make a lot more sense as an off-the-wall
experiment than a finished corporate product.

<http://www.so.cl/about>

> _Socl is a research project from Microsoft Research FUSE Labs..._

~~~
adamnemecek
Look into research of danah boyd who does this sort of research at MSR
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danah_boyd>)

Here are the names of her last 4 papers:

\- "Networked Trafficking: Reflections on Technology and the Anti-Trafficking
Movement."

\- "Making Sense of Teen Life: Strategies for Capturing Ethnographic Data in a
Networked Era."

\- "The New War Correspondents: The Rise of Civic Media Curation in Urban
Warfare."

\- "Sociality through Social Network Sites."

------
paulsutter
Why do one thing well, when you can do many things with tepid mediocrity?

Look what's happening to Microsoft's core business:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/mary-meeker-2012-internet-
tre...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mary-meeker-2012-internet-trends-year-
end-update-2012-12#-24)

EDIT: You won me over cooldeal. (robotic voice) Clippy is better than Google
Now. I will start using Bing.

~~~
cooldeal
Why take the time to write an insightful comment on the actual news at hand
when you can score brownie points with yet another knee jerk 'MS is dying'
comment linking to blog spam that further links to one graph that somehow
proves your point?

What about this news then? [http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-8-overtakes-
android-web-...](http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-8-overtakes-android-web-
traffic-just-ten-days-according-statcounter)

How does that fit in with the graph you posted?

Statistics are like bikinis, they hide more than what they reveal.

However, this being the top comment on this article says more than about HN
than you.

~~~
k3n
You make an excellent point, because I don't trust those Win8 numbers at all.

~~~
cooldeal
Wasn't it Statcounter that first said Chrome overtook IE in web usage and then
Microsoft tried to muddy that by pointing to some other statistics site? It's
hard to believe they're making things up to favor MS after that blog battle.

What about Steams' statistics?
[http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-8-thunders-past-
ma...](http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-8-thunders-past-mac-os-x-
steam)

Would you trust that or is Gabe who famously said Windows 8 is going to be
catastrophe is now faking stats?

~~~
k3n
I don't think the Steam figures are indicative of anything other than the fact
that gamers prefer Windows because it's still the only viable platform for
mainstream PC gaming.

And was Gabe explicitly commenting on adoption rate of Win8? Or perhaps was he
referring to the fact that developing games for Win8 will likely lead to fewer
and lower-quality games on that platform?

------
theklub
Don't they already have a social network with Xbox Live, ETC... seems like
building off of that more would be the right move.

~~~
iso-8859-1
The Live brand was retired: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live>

They won't make launch anything that used to have that brand, people wouldn't
use a product that was already discontinued.

------
sk55
HN conversation when they released the beta:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3999671>

------
jborden13
Another "me-too" product from a once innovative tech titan (yes they still do
innovate - just not on this).

------
Mutinix
I'm genuinely curious to know when and where the trend of naming companies or
products by removing the vowels or random letters from a word started from.
I've seen it in a number of places. Why? Is it because if they use the full
word, it becomes too general and difficult to associate?

~~~
mbrubeck
I believe the success of flickr.com (registered in 2003, launched in 2004)
kicked off the current vogue for these names, though there are earlier
examples too:

[http://www.branddialogue.com/diablogue/2006/06/names-that-
hu...](http://www.branddialogue.com/diablogue/2006/06/names-that-hurt/)

Misspelled words -- especially shortened ones -- have certain persistent
advantages as names for web companies. It's easier to find available domains;
it's a unique word for search engines; it's short and therefore quick to type.

Of course there are disadvantages too... Twitter was originally called "Twttr"
when it launched in 2006, but later restored the vowels:

<http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/>

------
freehunter
I didn't dig around much to see if it has anything in the way of content
filtering, but I loaded it up at work and was greeted with a page filled with
scantily-clad ladies in suggestive poses. I work information security so I
spend a decent amount of time evaluating risks associated with allowing
certain sites at work and visiting random websites is not frowned upon for
this reason, but as soon as I see suggestive materials I'm out of there.

Hey Microsoft, how about some content filtering turned on by default to hide
potentially objectionable or NSFW materials? Also while I have your attention,
why roll this out without any WP8 integration?

~~~
babblingdweeb
Ditto for me.

"Above the fold" photos of severely/epic photoshopped boobs, etc. Scrolling a
little further down I was greeted with photos of poop. Lots of them. I'll skip
what there were photos of on the next page.

Suffice to say, I am sure there are a ton of Internet trolls taking advantage
of the lack of filtering, and they want to make the site look bad. Hopefully
MS can put some type of fix on that sooner than later. Otherwise, I assume
some early adopters might be turned off just from going to the home page.

------
jwarzech
They definitely need a better way to determine what content gets featured on
the front page of their site.....the first image was a nsfw collection...

------
xionon
Potential NSFW warning: When I visited <http://beta.so.cl/>, I got a big
eyeful of the image from the old goatse.cx

(in case anyone doesn't know what that is, here's a sfw explanation:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx>)

------
eddmc
Microsoft had a social network. It was called MSN Messenger.

Of course, they killed it

This effort looks like another Zune

------
fwr
> Welcome, you can create your own collage in seconds

What kind of headline is that?

------
andreiursan
(One of) the first social network where you can sign in with Facebook.

~~~
fwr
The other one is Facebook.

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kaolinite
I don't understand why they picked a really short domain "so.cl" and then
redirect users to "www.so.cl" as soon as you hit it (which IMO looks kinda
weird).

~~~
simonw
so.cl is a short enough domain that some browsers might forbid it from setting
cookies, since it's the same length as .co.uk (and letting sites set cookies
for the whole .co.uk space would be a massive privacy violation).

~~~
WizKid
I thought browsers used <http://publicsuffix.org/> and not length of domain
names to do that.

~~~
simonw
Each browser has their own way of handling this - public suffix is Mozilla's
solution but I don't know if any if the other browsers are using it directly
(I'd be surprised if IE didn't have their own approach).

------
mrcharles
Front page already has pages dedicated to porn stars and is borderline NSFW,
if you were looking to check it out.

------
mathattack
I was scratching my head on this. Where's the buzz? What's this have that
Google+ missed on?

~~~
stusmall
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised too. I try to keep an eye out for these things and
this is the first I've heard of it. It makes me wonder how serious they are
about this.

~~~
simba-hiiipower
it’s actually been around for a little while now. i remember first hearing of
it about a year ago, and according to this [1] they launched a private beta
back in december 2011

as for how serious they are, i’d say not really, at least in terms of
building-out a viable network to compete with the likes of a facebook. i get
the impression that it's more of a large-scale research effort with a focus on
integrating social in a more meaningful way, particularly as it relates to
search

i think this [from the source below] sums it up pretty well:

 _Microsoft officials have described Socl as a kind of mash-up of social-
networking and search that is designed to get the learning communities to
start thinking about how to use collaboration technologies in new ways. And
according to the Softies and contrary to popular rumors, Socl is not an
attempt to take on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler or Pinterest.

Socl combined ideas the FUSE Labs teams have pioneered in some of their other
experimental projects, like Montage (a photo collage app) and Kodu (game
programming). Microsoft built Socl using TypeScript, its superset of
JavaScript._

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-opens-its-socl-social-
search-...](http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-opens-its-socl-social-search-site-
to-any-and-all-testers-7000008291/)

------
vonuebelgarten
So, is it an Apple Ping 2.0? Destined to the same fate, I suppose.

------
Timmy_C
Everyone agrees that we're going to call this "sock-el" right?

~~~
mrcharles
I can only view it as So-Chlorine.

------
schrodinger
Lotsa NSFW posts showing up when I tried it, careful...

------
navneetpandey
What a waste

------
laserDinosaur
Sockel? Strange name.

------
k3n
Oh look, a G+ clone...

MS is so inept at anything "social", it's sad they even keep trying (but I
guess if you have enough monkeys banging away on a keyboard long enough,
they'll eventually pound out the next FB "killer").

The Messenger+Live (aka. "Messenger social" from the site itself) is a comedy
of errors -- has anyone signed into that recently? It's XP meets Vista meets
Win8, but mostly just the annoying parts of each. And their "social forums"[1]
are the worst forums that I've ever had the privilege of ignoring.

1\. <http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/>

