Sorry, couldn't resist. Microsoft should really stop underpaying their marketing people so that they would stop producing kaka for branding. If Bing was a red flag, this is really someone having a field day. How would they ever settle on "s-o-dot-k-l" being "pronounced social" is beyond me. The logo looks like a diver with snorkel tube on a side. The /S/ is completely f#cked up in terms of glyph design, it is unbalanced and appears to be falling to the left. A wordmark that looks like retarded smiley that lacks any sort of concept subtlety, and a name that sounds like a chemical compound, based off a poisonous gas that was unleashed by sneaky Germans during WWI. Perfect all over.
I thought the same thing then I really thought about it and I suppose you can say it seems like its trying real hard to be Google. I could be way off base but this is how I tried to understand the criticism of the name Bing and how it could be perceived as a Google ripoff:
To most people, Google has no meaning. Only some math nerds and smart people realize its a number. To the rest it's just a funny sounding word. So then I imagine a meeting full of Microsoft marketing guys thinking of names that are similar to Google. I imagine them throwing out random suggestions of short combinations of meaningless syllables (think: names like Bitly but with no meaning in either syllable). So then they're all at this meeting shouting "Fetchrig!","Mocklet" at each other then someone says those are too long. Then the single syllable names come out: "Zing" Shoop", "Zune" (and then someone says "we already did Zune"). The meeting then gets real quiet and someone's Hot Pocket gets done cooking and just after the microwave makes its signature noise someone jumps up and declares "Let's call it Bing!" and Microsoft's new search engine was born.
But in all seriousness it could've been an attempt to think of a meaningless word like Google that can be used in the same way people say "Google it". So with Bing you have a meaningless funny sounding word that lends itself just as easily to the "Just X it" phrase.
It's actually so simple it might have to be wrong. Why don't you just Bing it?
I've never liked it. Probably as it was a blatant rebranding exercise. It just feels so pretentious. Just like 'Google' would if it were a new name (great in it's day.) All the web 2.0 names, seem so naff now. I pretty much cringe whenever I read one. (I think the only clever part was naming it after Bing Crosby - which you have positive associations with). Perhaps they wanted Ping. Or perhaps it's some play on Bill Gates' name!
Sadly, this site has some security vulnerabilities. Although I have reported them to Socl@microsoft.com, I am not sure if my message will reach its intended destination as the "support" forum is inaccessible to me.
Just typing this out in case a member of MS Research is reading along and wants to contact me directly.
Edit: Just got a reply after less than 5 minutes had passed. They are notified and take appropriate steps. :-)
I will post a report here as soon as the issue is resolved. Basically it is plain XSS and one more thing so nothing overwhelmingly critical for them to fix.
The technology doesn't attract people - people attract people. Microsoft have yet again missed the basic concept of social networking. Is it really that difficult to figure out?
As so.cl has no users, it can hardly be considered a social network. So far it's just a shell of a website with nothing to attract anyone into it.
If you wanna break into the social networking industry, stop creating useless technology and start creating communities.
Since this is from Lili Cheng's team, I suspect this is a MSR/Labs effort as opposed to a full-blown 'product'. That team is spectacular -she built one of the first social networks to ever exist - Wallop, all the way back in 2003-2004.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "one of the first". Friendster got 1 million users before anyone else, and was launched 2002. PlanetAll launched 1996. SixDegrees launched 1997. Friends Reunited launched 2000. SuicideGirls launched 2001. MySpace launched 2003. LinkedIn launched 2003.
Social networking features were also common in many other communities.
Well... Wallop was one of the first... thousand. ;-)
I really hate when people claim they were first on something hoping nobody remembers what came before.
Disclaimer: I helped build one of the first e-commerce applications in Brazil - a supermarket mailed CD-ROMs to clients who shopped and an application sent a text file over the phone (it was 1994 or 1995, months before the first proper ISP launched) and a program on the receiving end would process everything. Payment was money or check, paid upon receiving the merchandise. The client-side was mostly ToolBook and the back-end was Visual Basic.
That supermarket was one of the first to launch a website a year later built upon the backend processes we helped build, but with completely new software. Later in 1996 I wrote the e-commerce site for Brazil's then largest department store. At 10 orders per day, it was a huge success. I usually say it was one of the first and I'm aware of 2 other stores that came before.
I remember Swedens first social network, StajlPlejs, started at 96 and changed name to LunarStorm in 2000. Had about 20% of Sweden on that site. Well before 2004.
In my mind, LiveJournal (April 1999) is the first really successful "social network". And as far as I can tell, it's the oldest one of any particular significance that still operates.
>she built one of the first social networks to ever exist
If anyone is curious about what it means to be an "early social network" and where this fits in history, here is an article that talks about a few: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505250_162-57437460/beyond-faceb.... Wallop was created at roughly the same time as friendster, myspace, linkedin, and tribe.net.
The text at the bottom says 'FUSE Labs'. FUSE stands for 'Future of Social Experiences' if I remember correctly. This was a team Ray Ozzie created to experiment with social behavior. They have some of the smartest people around in MSFT (and some good friends).
I've been in technology long enough that I've learned that when I see some random person I don't know claim that something was "the first" it usually was no higher than like the 4th. And if someone says "one of the first" it usually means like the 13th or 29th or so. But yeah, I'll let this one pass as possibly legit for certain narrow definitions. :)
Meanwhile, back in the 80's we had BBSes and later Usenet and we had user profiles, notifications (only while logged-in, only some BBS instances), chat and topic/interested-based discussion groups, and file sharing. Shocking I know. Yes with simple to no graphics. Yes with slow speeds. Yes with weak computers. But we had it. And one positive it was mostly academics and techies in the community, so the minimum quality bar in terms of intelligence and education was fairly high.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work at all. The Done button after "I have read the terms.. " didn't work and then the build your popup box was loading for infinite time (yes infinite).
The top bar looks very much like Google's!
So, it's Facebook meets Pinterest meets Schemer? Looks interesting. I like how they go out of their way to assuage privacy fears on the login page ("Socl does not share your searches etc on Facebook").
Also, I hate to be that guy, but it should be "its" in the title.
So.cl (pronounced "social") is an experimental research
project, developed by Microsoftβs FUSE Labs, focused on
exploring the possibilities of social search for the
purpose of learning.
Sounds surprisingly interesting... Also surprised by the "Login with Facebook" option, but I guess it makes some sense if it's just a research project.
Don't know if anyone remembers netmeeting. Microsoft basically discovered chatroulette back in 1998 already, although the results must have freaked them out - lots of naked people. Wonder if they've changed their views this time?
Not to get into the with or without www. argument, but this domain would benefit without the prefix. www.so.cl looks odd, especially when they are trying to brand it as "social". Only reason why I'm bringing it up is that they are forcing the www.
I just registered to say that the "remember me on this computer" checkbox on teh front page does not use a <label>. Whenever I see stuff like this (on a brand new website nonetheless!) I lose more hope we will see consistent and semantic website markup.
This is just another example of why Microsoft is never going to succeed - trying to force yourself into a market almost always produces a poor product. Microsoft is always going to be losing to the startups which evolve a product from an actual want.
well, whenever MS makes a product that everyone thinks is inferior and will never make it, I like to recall msn messenger, and of course ie
messenger competed vs icq which had more features, large user base, icq was the facebook of the time, yet somehow mysteriously msn messenger took over
give it time, facebook is becoming icq, ppl who are complaining about the interface are only increasing and its very possible that could switch
a note about G+ i believe a big reason why it didnt catch up and where MS may have got it better, is the branding SOCL is not windowsLive+ or hotmail+ its a completely new brand with its easy to find url ... G+ is harder to find because its integrated into the google brand
Requires javascript. Yells at me that I need to enable javascript if I go there. Doesn't explain why I might want to enable javascript, or hint at what their doubtless valuable javascript-mediated experience might be, or even show me an ad or a press release. Does try to load javascript libraries from other domains, so that even if I create an exception for so.cl I get the same error message.
Is this really a constructive way to build custom in this day and age?
1. I am a paranoid geek. (But in this age in which JS is powerful enough to implement a SIP stack or a virtual 486 processor, is it truly paranoid to want control over potentially hostile code running in ones browser?)
2. I'm blind or severely visually disabled and need a screen text-to-speech reader. Funnily enough, JS-mediated sites truly suck for the visually disabled. Do you want your site to be in breach of disabilities discrimination laws?
3. I don't like ads.
4. I run a low power machine (a multi-years-old laptop) and find multimegabyte javascript apps bog it down and cause it to blow hot air across my knees.
Seconding this. I've tried it in Chrome, Firefox, and IE9 and it fails almost every time (strange too that it's inconsistent). IE9 is actually the worst, giving just "The view named 'Anonymous' does not derive from the ViewBase class."
For example, I created a post about a tabletop game I ran this weekend, and was able to search within the posting process and quickly add two images related to the status update.
I wonder if Google+ bashing will target so.cl now. Probably not because Microsoft was clever enough to launch it quietly and call it 'experiment' not 'Facebook killer'.
And will probably get no users, too. Also Google did call it something close to an experiment. It was the media that called it Facebook killer, just like they called Wolfram the Google killer when they launched.
Agree completely. I tried to check it out on nexus galaxy. Facebook login didn't work, still not sure why as the popup was disfunctional. Will probably never visit again.
Yikes. This is a really blatant mash of Google+/FB with no mobile presence and an enormous identity crisis. They even basically straight up stole "circles" and even use "Circles" as the bullet icon for the <ul> displaying them under "Feed". The "dropdown popup" on each post looks pixel for pixel identical to G+'s, "Video Party" = Hangout (which would be hard to beat anyway as Hangouts are impressive if you've not used them lately and will soon be 100% plugin free), FB's "What's on your mind" = So.cl's "What is on your mind".
Is there anything new or original here at all, except for some bad "text as images" and other MSN/Live/Microsoft account styling cues? Good god, this is just, embarrassing.
Is there anything new or original here at all, except for some bad "text as images" and other MSN/Live/Microsoft account styling cues? Good god, this is just, embarrassing.
Well.. my feed stream is full of random people posting barely clothed people..
My facebook random people are all fully clothed.
Microsoft R&D delivers again. Name one feature in so.cl that wasn't a copy of what they already saw somebody else do, except given a slightly different name or capitalization in order to shave off the boilerplate. Is there anything left from Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon/Sony for them to copy, er, I mean, innovate in-house?
I also bet they'll claim it took a team of 50 people and cost $1B to create. Because taxes and accounting, of course.
- Very slow response time to requests to the server. (4x of Facebook response time)
- Serious usability and JavaScript problems.
- Main point did not made clear. Just signed up, auto-followed 12 friends and still no idea what to do with it or why would I use it.
- Back button does not work at some cases with AJAX URLs with URL hashes (.../#/foo). Breaking the web experience.