Earlier this summer, a teaser page appeared at Socl.com revealing Tulalip, an oddly named service from Microsoft promising a new way to “Find what you need and Share what you know.” Facebook and Twitter sign-ins were offered, and the design was reminiscent of Windows Phone’s tiles. It turns out Microsoft has been testing this service with a select group of “friends,” and this week, I got an early look at Socl — “Tulalip” appears to be dropped — a curious site that’s coming out of the FUSE research group that will eventually be rolled out to the public. The site mixes search, discovery, and, go figure, a social network. How’s it hold up? Read on.
DESIGN
Ignoring for the moment that the interface looks a lot like that other social network, Socl offers a bare bones, three column layout, with basic navigation in the left rail, a social feed down the middle, and invites and video party options (more on that soon) on the right. As usual, you can follow other friends, but you won’t find any list-making tools. Core to the experience is the large search field at the top that asks, “What are you searching for?” effectively creating a new type of status update. You can also toggle the field to a traditional status update. With Socl, you’ve got the option to post to your feed either a note that you’re searching for “live Prince covers” or that you’re ‘live at a Prince concert.” Entering a search term or status update drops it into your feed with appropriate Bing results, where your friends will have the option to comment, like, or further tag it. Clicking ‘tag’ adds the search term to your personal list of tags, and you can sort your friends’ searches and status updates by type (i.e. web, video, news, images).
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