Mediaboss Marketing

So.cl's Everyone feed shows you the most recent searches conducted on the site. Image: So.cl

Microsoft clearly wants a slice of your social networking time. The company released a revamped Bing with social features earlier this month, and has now made its experimental social search network So.cl pronounced social open to the public.

But is So.cl the next Facebook, Twitter or even Google+? We spent some hands-on time with Microsofts new social network to find out. The short answer: no. But So.cl does offer some unique features that, if done right, could appeal to a specific population students.

Like other social networking sites, So.cl users have a profile, can follow other users, and most importantly, share posts within the network. But instead of status updates, check-ins or 140-character bits, your So.cl posts revolve around internet searches.

According to Microsoft, So.cl is an experiment in open search thats focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning. The companys FUSE Labs arm developed the site and originally made it available only to students at the University of Washington, Syracuse University and New York University. So.cl is still in its experimental mode, but now its open to the public to test out.

To access So.cl, you can opt to sign up through your Windows Live ID or Facebook. Thats the first indication that So.cl isnt a Facebook competitor. In fact, So.cl is a bit more useful if you sign in with your Facebook login, which I did. Once youre in, So.cl will show you any of your Facebook friends that currently are on the site only two in my case and let you follow them. The site will also suggest other subjects to follow, ranging from music to startups to popular people.

After youve chosen who and what you want to follow, So.cl populates your Feed with all of the applicable posts. You can also choose to view everything thats being posted to So.cl, which I dont recommend because the Everything feed is incredibly cluttered in its current state.

You can browse posts related to different topic hubs on So.cl. Image: So.cl

Each users post represents a search he or she conducted through the So.cl search bar. So.cl uses Microsofts public Bing API, so youll get very similar results as you do through Bing search. The main difference is in the interface and layout. So.cl adds a section called Feed Results, which displays posts related to your search from other So.cl users. For example, when I searched pancakes, I saw that a user named Cristin searched for greek yogurt pancakes a few months ago.

Like on other social networks, you can like, comment and share a users post. So.cl also includes a riff features that allows you to conduct the same search as that user, and a tag feature that lets you tag your posts and other users posts with specific interests. For example, a pancakes search could be tagged as food.

More here:
Hands On: So.cl, Microsoft's 'Experimental' Social Search Network