What’s the use of Microsoft Socl or So.cl? Another social networking site?

People really love to socialize, and Facebook, Google Plus and Pinterest offer them a great platform to express and share their opinions about anything and everything. However, there was only one technology giant i.e., Microsoft, which was lagging behind in this race, but not anymore as it has launched its own social networking site named SO.CL. It has been developed by the Microsoft Research Fuse Labs, and some people including Microsoft call it Socl and some breaks it into two little words, which are ‘so’ ‘cl’.

Preview of Microsoft Fuse Labs

What is So.Cl?

So.cl as the name itself suggests, is made for socializing with your existing friends and new people. Basically, the social networking portal is made using ‘.cl’, the top level domain name, which is used for websites running from Chile. However, Microsoft isn’t operating the So.Cl from Chile, in fact, it is running it from the US only, but grabbed this particular top level domain name to have a higher impact on its users mind and make it sound similar to social and easy to remember.

A Facebook Competitor?

So.Cl is all about making new friends, connecting with existing friends using Facebook login Id and Windows Live Id, which also lets you get inside, feel, and browse through all amazing features that this all new and amazing social platform possesses pretty quickly and easily. This also makes it clear that So.cl is not a Facebook Competitor in actual.

So.cl on wikipedia

However, you can also call it a new way to attract people, who are addicted to Facebook, and don’t sign up on other social networking sites at all. But by granting an easy access to people using Facebook user Id and password, Microsoft will also get the pie, as it will be able to post on your behalf on your Facebook profile, which will help gaining popularity and brand recognition.

In addition to this, you can write posts about anything and everything that runs in your mind all through day and night. And, when you’ll have a closer look at its logo design, your tensions would ease out in no time (if any), as it portrays a smiling face with two big eyes, which eventually makes you smile back.

Socl Features you will really love to explore

Once you login to So.cl using your Windows Live or Facebook user Id, you’ll get to see a list of great features on the left sidebar, which includes Explore, Post, Profile, Video Parties and Interests.

The Explore tab: It gives you the power to explore the best of so.cl, where you get plenty of options to browse through such as Art, Animated Gifs, Photography, Innovation, Movies, and Startups. This option ensures that you stay updated on your favorite topic.

The Post tab: This option lets you create your own posts, which may include anything like text, images, website links or URLs. The best part about writing posts in So.cl is that they go viral automatically, as every individual using so.cl can easily see your posts from the Feed>>Everyone tab.

Video Parties: With the presence of this amazing option, you need not to browse videos separately on You Tube, as you can play your favorite videos directly from the video parties section, where you only need to put your video name in the search box provided.

What’s so unique about So.cl

Since Facebook came in the limelight, people found socializing with friends and strangers to be beneficial in the long run. But since then, many social networking sites have been launched, out of which some site have managed to grab the attention, and some failed to get the due recognition from the web users. The best example of failure could be none other than Orkut, a social networking site by Google.

Orkut was launched on 24th January 2004 and since then it hasn’t been able to entice the US audience. However, it has been successful in some countries like Brazil, India, and Japan. Currently, Orkut has a base of 33 million users, out of which whopping 59.1 percent of people are from Brazil, 27.1 percent from India, and 6.7 percent from Japan. But as Facebook became live within a month of official launch of Orkut, it managed to overpower it, and grabbed the attention all over the world. This eventually sent out shivers down the Google’s spine, and made it rethink over the existence of Orkut. And considering the defeat in social networking, Google launched another ‘social missile’ by releasing Google Plus.

However, when it comes to So.cl, there are various different features, which makes it unique from other social networking sites, and the unavailability of sign up as a new user proves that its really different and not in the game of collecting private information from the users. The other features, which make it unique, are listed below.

Preview of Unique About So.cl

• The first and foremost unique feature is, you get to see everyone’s latest posts via the Feed tab listed on the left sidebar.

• You can create innumerable video parties from your account and can invite your friends to watch it with you virtually.

• It offers easy options to set up the entire profile, where from you can select the display picture, your nickname, and can also create a brief introduction. It also provide you with a wide variety of options to get the notifications for, which includes comments you receive on a post or search, on things that you have commented on, likes and tags (if any) on your posts or comments, invites you to the video party, starts following you, tags your name in his/her posts and sends you a message.

• By default so.cl uses Bing for online search; however, you can also change it to so.cl itself. The integration of Bing in the so.cl search is really a unique feature to brag about.

• You can choose and set the default language for your feed from the long list of 37 languages. Have you ever seen that before in any other networking sites?

• Another great feature about so.cl is the ‘Riff’ option, which is located just below your posts. When you use this option on any other person’s posts, the particular post gets another boost and goes back on top in the live feed section.

Preview of Riff Option

In addition to all these features, another best thing about socl is that its community managers get in touch with new comers as soon as they login for the first time, and then they respond to each and every query within seconds. Now you yourself think on how many social networking sites have you witness such an overwhelming response from the community managers.