Our Jim Devitt wrote an introductory post about a new social media platform called Socl. If you missed Jim’s post, you can read it here. Personally, I’m not crazy about any platform that only gives you options to sign in through other social media outlets. I don’t like giving apps access to my Facebook account. But that’s just me. Being a photographer, I figured this was a platform I should check out, so I sucked it up and signed up for Socl. You’re welcome.
Once you’ve given Socl permission to violate you, I mean access you, through Facebook or WindowsLive, you’re good to go. Now you should set up your profile. At the top of the screen, you’ll see the word “me.” Go ahead and click on that and it will bring you to the profile screen at left. Then, click on settings (pink arrow).
That will bring you to your profile set-up screen (see right). You can choose what photo to use for your profile (don’t forget to use your branded image!), as well as your nickname. I wasn’t certain what the heck this would be used for, but it turns out that it will show up next to your photo on your profile, so I went with K. S. Brooks, Author. Why not, right? You then have 200 characters in which to briefly explain who you are. Make sure you take advantage of all the different social media links they give you. When you’re done, scroll down and hit the big grey save button at the bottom right corner of your screen.
This will bring you back to your profile (screen at left) which still looks pretty naked. So, click on the create some posts link (bottom right pink arrow) and lets give this bad boy a try.
This brings us to the “postbuilder” page (at right) where we can name the title of our post and search for items to post on it by typing in our search subject and clicking on the aqua plus sign. 
Since the only book cover I see there is BAD BOOK, I’m going to click on more images (circled in pink) to see if I have better luck there.
This is an excellent way to find photographs of items completely unrelated to you, such as John Wayne, Garth Brooks, 101 Dalmations, Brooks Sneakers, Mel Brooks, Foster Brooks and so much more. This is one reason I’m really not a big fan of Bing. After perusing hundreds of images, I was only able to click on six of my fifteen titles. I decided to type in the actual titles of my books, which yielded more success except for the most recent two, for which I was able to view photos of mostly naked people and one black and white photo of Errol Flynn wielding a sword.
When I was finally done, this is what my (theoretically, it’s really a bulletin board, but since Pinterest uses that terminology, I guess Socl doesn’t want to) – post looked like (see screen shot to the left). Once you post your post (oh goodness, that’s awkward, isn’t it?), it’ll show on the front page of Socl until someone else’s new post knocks yours off. Is it worth the time? I dunno. One thing I noticed was that once I had Socl open in my browser, it slowed everything else down – especially Facebook. Yet another reason I hate using apps.
Whether you use Socl or not is up to you. If you decide to, now you know how to set up your profile and get your photos populated into a post. Feel free to check out my posts here: http://www.so.cl/#/profile/KS-Brooks.
Interesting, Kat. So you can’t add a picture by simply posting a URL? That’s a drawback.
I’m pretty sure I did try that, Lynne. I wrote this a few weeks ago so I can’t be sure. The old memory ain’t as sharp as it used to be! LOL.
http://www.so.cl/#/profile/Rich-Meyer
I done gives it a try. Dunno if I did it right though.