Microsoft's New Social Network, So.cl: It's Like Google+ For Wonks | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft's New Social Network, So.cl: It's Like Google+ For Wonks

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29 pointsGarbage28 comments

Before people jump on the "M$ Sucks" Bandwagon, please read the About page [1] and note that this is a Research Project. It is not intended to be a competitor to Facebook, Twitter, and such, but an experiment as to how social search can be used to enhance learning and education.

[1] http://www.so.cl/about/faq

On Techmeme, one of the first articles linked to is that of Robert Scoble. I know MS is an easy target, but I really feel taking such potshots at your former employer, especially when you pride yourself on being a tech dilettante and should clearly know better, is unwarranted. Of course, my personal opinion is that this is an interesting project and will hopefully lead to something.

Perhaps, but you have to admit that it's a bit convenient to wrap oneself in the shroud of "research experiment" when launching a public-facing service or application. If the service takes off, MS can drop the "experiment" description. If it falls flat, they can rally behind it and claim plausible deniability over the fact that so.cl was ever truly in the social networking arms race.

It may indeed be an experiment, or at least have begun in the lab. But consider that it's got the consumer-facing web presence of a full product/service rollout. There are plenty of ways to get a true experiment, or learning tool, widely disseminated without making it appear to be a full-fledged product launch. At our most charitable, we could probably describe the insistence on the experimental nature of so.cl as bet hedging.

[I say all this as just about the last person who wants to hop onto an anti-MS bandwagon. I bear no ill will toward Microsoft in general, or so.cl specifically. In fact, I wish them both the best of luck in this endeavor. I think the world could use more options in social networking.]

Perhaps, but you have to admit that it's a bit convenient to wrap oneself in the shroud of "research experiment" when launching a public-facing service or application.

Sure. But I don't think it's that rare- Apple has wrapped Siri in a "beta" tag to basically excuse any and all failures of the product. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but making a beta product the key feature in a new product (and advertising on TV accordingly) seemed like a slightly dishonest move to me.

Google Plus is a research project into the question of whether or not Google can monetize the social web.

Is "Research Project" poised to become the new "Beta"?

This is a beta product which is based on a joint piece of work that Microsoft did with New York University. NYU recently opened a campus in UAE and wanted to build a social network to facilitate collaboration across researchers from different campuses. More here: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/socl-12151...

This whole discussion, excluding a few posts, is a display of how HN is such a shitty place right now.

And you're not really helping. Perhaps if you'd posted an actually useful, thought-through comment, people would be inspired to follow the tone and standard you set forth.

Further, if you're going to to complain, please do it with arguments and maybe even solutions.

I agree.

The snarky article was so dismissive that it actively failed in its stated mission of we-try-it-out-so-you-don't-have-to. I was particularly put off by the way the author described video parties. "Facebook or Google+ could easily replicate it, if they wanted to." Well that's the entire Internet dismissed in one sentence.

"But that doesn't change the fact that any social network launching in 2012 that isn't mobile-based, is most likely doomed to fail if it wants to reach a mainstream audience."

I disagree. If I were to make a social network now, I would still go web first.

I like the idea of aggressive research by MS. I've been following quite a lot of their projects, and am kind of sad when most of them die a quiet, slow and painful death.

I still remember Singularity, which still sounds like a great idea. I'm pretty sure today we have the hardware to run things like that.

This actually seems quite useful to me. You can curate your search result, and when you search you get search result others curated if that is available.

Their copywriters didn't allow then to write lolcats so they said cute cats instead?

I would cite the text, but it's not copy&paste-able because Microsoft: http://az94986.vo.msecnd.net/2.0/ftux/content/slide-1.png?_=...

The two are not the same. People enjoy looking at cute cats that are not always lolcats.

It's possible they're not talking about lolcats but instead about the Reddit habit of up-voting pictures of cute cats (and other animals), calling them "karma magnets", and so on... see for example http://www.reddit.com/r/aww

I stand corrected.

I think developers forgot to get rid of all the javascript alerts from home page

I'm surprised they didn't call it Microsoft+. Wow, just when you thought Microsoft were heading in the right direction and climbing back to the top of the ladder, they go and build a social network nobody will use.

I thought the same until I saw that it was a research product/experiment. I think that makes it interesting and harmless rather than sad and misguided.

All Google products are released as experiments as well. It's just another buzzword oriented way of launching products and invalidating any negative or positive criticism of said product. Experiment = Beta.

what's next, microsoft's google wave clone?

From what I read, it partly is a google wave clone...

hahahahahaha

What is this about?

I mean seriously you need a Facebook account to long into this? To do what? Discover information you easily can on Facebook?

Doesn't that sort of totally defeat the purpose of this? And don't tell me about 'sharing information'. Because twitter solves this problem already by letting you follow people you are interested in.

I'm on Facebook because most of my friends and family share pictures, stories and jokes online on Facebook. And not being on Facebook means missing out on many things. I am on Facebook because everybody else is on Facebook.

Please don't invite people to Ghost towns, to do what you are already doing else where.

If this is radically different idea, its a different story. But a "me too" social network is the last thing I need now.

> What is this about?

A research project from MSR, not a competitor to Twitter, Facebook et al. How the press seems to have ignored this is beyond me.

Either they overlooked it, like many people here seem to have done, or they realised that a story on how Microsoft is in a fight to the death with Google and Facebook is much more interesting and much more likely to draw tons of readers than a description of a fairly harmless Microsoft research project.

Even if it's not true.

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