It’s that time of year again! Snow is falling, shoppers are bustling and a new social media platform has surfaced.
Just what we needed, right?
Well, since it’s the holidays and you might have a little down time, here’s a new one for you to play with … Socl.
Pronounced social, this new platform allows you to express and share your ideas through collages of images, links, captions and videos. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Socl is a research project from Microsoft Research FUSE Labs and it began as an experiment. Needless to say, it has now evolved into a fully fledged social media platform that combines the concept of Pinterest with the social aspect of Facebook (without all the restrictions.)
It still has a few bugs to work out—you can’t upload a profile picture yet, it just borrows one from FB or Windows Live—but it seems to be catching on. It’s easy to use, just type in a topic and BAM! It gives you tons of content to share. Because this is Microsoft, it uses the Bing search engine to populate the content.
I’m not endorsing it by any means, however, I have toyed around with it and can see where it might catch on. Within seconds, I was able to put a collage together on The Card. By typing my name in the search bar, it pulled together just about anything I would want to promote—trailers, reviews, sites—you name it.
You can tag your posts so that when someone enters a topic, up pops your collages that match. It’s a great way to build your platform without taking a lot of time.
As I mentioned before, Socl is an open social network where people can connect around posts and choose to follow people, interests or both. You have the ability to share posts on FB or Twitter.
The platform separates Feeds into three sections—Everyone, People I Follow and Interests. Similar to FB, you can “smile” at a post or share posts. A new concept is riffing which allows you to create a visual response (collage) to a post and it will be attached to that post for others.
Want to build a video playlist? Socl offers Video Parties, which allow users to build video playlists and invite friends to watch in real time. You can add your stuff to existing playlists, like putting your selection into a jukebox.
I don’t really think that Socl can replace social networks like FB, Twitter or Google+, however, what it does do is combine some of the best aspects of FB, Google+ and Pinterest to provide a brand-new experience. Only time will tell if Socl can grab a share of your social media time; meanwhile, if you’re someone who likes to be on the cutting edge of technology, here’s your chance to be one of the first users to a new and interesting platform.
If you visit the site, come back here and let others know what you think in the comments section below.
I like the collage idea, Jim. I’ll have to look into this. Thanks for the tip!
My pleasure Lynne! Have fun.
I wish I were on the cutting edge, but I’m more of a late adopter. Thanks for doing the research on this one so I don’t have to! =)
Thanks Krista, no worries on the late adopting. Many times your better off that way.
Whew…got my posts set up. Now to go back and tag (guess who forgot that little step). Ugh.