Microsoft So.cl Review

By Matthew_Thepc
in Member Reviews

 Share

Recommended Posts

Experienced

Matthew_Thepc

Posted
Posted

Hey Neowin,

Got an invite to So.cl a day ago and saw that no one had written a review of it :(

Anyways, So.cl is currently under maintenance (some server load problems or something), but when it comes back online I'd love to post some pics of it if anyone wants them.

Where does So.cl fit in?

So.cl isn't a Facebook killer (as has been said many a time by Microsoft), but it is pretty cool. It has following and hastags like Twitter does, and it has smooth transitions and an all-around sexiness like Google+. I personally feel that it's a lot better than Twitter (*gasp*), is about as good as G+, but not Facebook :/

Distinctive Features:

Of course there's the whole "What are you searching for?" which allows you to search Bing and then click on websites and pictures to be added to your 'search post' (quite montage-like, actually). That search post gets added to your followers feed and the "Everyone" feed as long as you don't have it set to "Private" (which is easily changeable by a click of a button next to the search box). There's also a simple post option; when you go to search something, you can click a button to switch it to 'post' mode. This makes your 'search' a post. You start off with 5 invites, but every now and then you'll get more. Video parties allow a group of people to watch YouTube HD videos (apparently there was some problem with SD, but they're trying to fix it) and chat about them in real-time. You can share posts to Facebook (as in, you can click on any post and then "Share to facebook"), get embed code, edit your posts, or get permalinks to posts.

Large drawbacks:

Small group of users. Also, you're locked into Youtube HD (which doesn't run nicely on slow internet connections) and Facebook login (many workplaces and schools block Facebook). Unlike Facebook & G+ there's no way to chat (without being in a Video Party, of course), and there's no app platform or API. There's also a list of requests and problems that are just small things. To see them, search for the tag "Feature Ask" on So.cl.

Misc. Notes:

The notification system is kind of wacko...altho there are settings for when you get notifications in your inbox, on the So.cl website sometimes you get them, sometimes you dont, and sometimes they're extremely delayed.

You can use So.cl as a search provider

The So.cl team is extremely active in So.cl....they'll answer questions and implement features asked on socl.

Inviting friends is relatively easy, you can enter emails (separated with a comma), or simply post an invite to Facebook. Unfortunantly, there's no way to invite a specific Facebook friend.

Overall, I don't think So.cl is gonna be getting any bigger than just a research project...Although I do consider it better than Twitter, I don't believe that Microsoft is going to invest enough money in it to become a major player (unless, of course, they implemented it straight into Bing)

Well, that's my two cents. If you'd like screenshots or more information about any of the features, just ask ;) oh btw, is anyone on here already in the So.cl beta?

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1046017-microsoft-socl-review/
Share on other sites
Mentor

BetaAddict

Posted
Posted

The way I see it, So.cl might become a social media aggregator. I know we already have a ton of those, all of them with their own pros and cons. But given MS's success rate in recent years in producing quality stuff like Win 7 and WP7 Mango in the recent years, it really could become something of a hub they can potentially include by default as an app in Windows 8. Add some Bing integration and you should be able to find just about anything from Facebook and Twitter that is public.

MetroTwit is an awesome app too, even though it is not made by MS. It just shows how awesome apps can be for Windows 8 if coded properly.

  • 5 years later...
Grand Master

Vlad Dudau Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Fun fact: this review and its image was cited and linked to today, March 8th 2017, as Socl announced it's shutting down: https://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-experimental-social-network-socl-will-shut-down-next-week 

 

Cheers to Matthew_Thepc for all of it :D

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Posts

    • Politically funny images of the World

      By Jim K · Posted

    • Microsoft believes that AI agents will eventually replace apps through Project Solara

      By Big John Studd · Posted

      The sweet release of death has never looked more appealing.
    • New Surface Pro with Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 leaks ahead of announcement

      By MrElectrifyer · Posted

      Meh, just another dongle-haven downgrade compared to my Surface Pro 7+. Whenever I decide to upgrade in the next decade or so, it certainly won't be another microslop Surface with this enshitification trend they've been having after the Surface Pro 7+. Hopefully a future generation of the Framework 12 will be a real upgrade...
    • This could exactly be how our Sun ends but it's not as simple

      By hellowalkman · Posted

      This could exactly be how our Sun ends but it's not as simple by Sayan Sen Image by Drew Rae via Pexels An international team led by Université de Montréal (University of Montreal) PhD student Érika Le Bourdais has found that the ancient white dwarf star LSPM J0207+3331 is still pulling in planetary debris, even though it has been cooling for about three billion years. White dwarfs are dense, Earth-sized stellar remnants left behind when Sun-like stars exhaust their nuclear fuel and shed their outer layers. The star, located 145 light-years away in the constellation Triangulum, is the oldest and coldest white dwarf known to have a surrounding disk of dust. The star was first spotted in 2019 by a citizen scientist through the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project. Its cool temperature immediately suggested that it was very old, since white dwarfs gradually lose heat over time. Using the W. M. Keck telescopes in Hawaii, astronomers later confirmed that the star shows infrared signals consistent with dust rings formed by asteroids breaking apart under its strong gravity. Such infrared excesses occur when a star emits more infrared light than expected, often because warm dust surrounding it absorbs and re-radiates energy. “This discovery challenges our understanding of planetary system evolution,” said Le Bourdais. “The fact that we still see planetary debris being accreted three billion years after the star became a white dwarf suggests that asteroids, comets, and even planets can remain in orbit around these stars for a very long time.” Spectroscopic analysis—a technique that studies light to identify the chemical elements present in an object—revealed thirteen heavy elements in the star’s atmosphere: sodium, magnesium, aluminium, silicon, calcium, titanium, chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, and strontium. Normally, heavy elements sink quickly in hydrogen-rich white dwarfs, making them hard to detect. “We expected to see only a few elements, but we found dozens!” explained Le Bourdais. The research paper adds more detail. The absence of carbon features suggests the debris came from a carbon-volatile-depleted source. The abundance pattern shows slight deficits of magnesium and silicon compared to iron but otherwise resembles Earth-like material. This points to a differentiated rocky body—one whose materials have separated into distinct layers such as a metallic core and rocky mantle—with a metallic core fraction higher than Earth’s. In other words, the star is accreting the remains of a large rocky object, similar in structure to Earth or the asteroid Vesta. “White dwarfs offer one of the only ways we can directly measure the composition of exoplanets,” said Patrick Dufour, co-author and professor at Université de Montréal. “When planetary debris come too close, they are torn apart by the star’s gravity and end up polluting its atmosphere, leaving a detailed chemical fingerprint of its composition.” The team also detected weak Ca II H & K line core emission, making this only the second known isolated polluted white dwarf to show this feature. These are specific spectral signatures produced by ionised calcium and can indicate unusual physical activity in a star’s upper atmosphere. The finding suggests that extra physical processes may be happening in or above the star’s upper atmosphere. The study stresses the importance of including heavy elements in model atmosphere calculations, since leaving them out can distort the inferred structure and lead to inaccurate stellar parameters. Earlier work suggested the star’s infrared excess came from two dust rings. The new analysis shows that a single silicate dust disk—a ring composed largely of rock-forming minerals rich in silicon and oxygen—can explain the observed signal at 11.6 μm, simplifying the picture of the system’s structure. The question of how debris ended up falling into the star so late remains open. One idea is that giant planets in the system slowly destabilised smaller bodies over billions of years. Another possibility is that a passing star disturbed the orbits of debris. “Future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope or archival data found in the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission could help distinguish between a planetary rearrangement and the gravitational effect of a close stellar encounter,” said John Debes, co-author and researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Dufour noted that hydrogen-rich white dwarfs are the most common type, and the coolest among them are the oldest stars in the galaxy. “We didn't have the habit of looking for signs of accretion in them. This unique case motivates us to expand our search to more of these stars.” The findings show that even after billions of years, planetary systems can remain active and complex. Substantial accretion events—the gradual accumulation of surrounding material onto a celestial object—can still occur long after a star’s death, offering a rare window into the composition and fate of distant worlds. Source: University of Montreal, IOPScience This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
    • DuckDuckGo's New Search Page

      By +Edouard · Posted

      Doesn't DDG mainly use Bing?

  • Recent Achievements

    • One Month Later
      B2Proxy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Year In
      MadMung0 earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      jefred earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Apprentice
      JoeyNeo went up a rank
      Apprentice
    • Week One Done
      oliviaexpo earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      485
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      228
    3. 3
      Skyfrog
      70
    4. 4
      FloatingFatMan
      58
    5. 5
      neufuse
      56
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!