Microsoft Research appears at it again, their So.cl network project from FUSE Labs has just released four new ways for people to share thier ideas on the web. Perhaps you’ve never heard of so.cl yet, which was “created as an experimental research project in social research” which is a fancy way of saying it was Microsoft’s answer to Facebook, casted under the light of a “project” in case it didn’t work.
But I’ve given Microsoft a lot of slack these days, and although I might be a little tired right now, I like what I’m seeing here out of so.cl. So.cl seems to have evolved into a budding community where people can express ideas a little differently via these easy to collect collages. So.cl posts are generally a mix of images, links and videos discovered from around the web with options to annotate further with titles and captions. This could prove useful to creatives and businesses starving for attention online. Your posts can also be easily shared with other social networks like Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Twitter.
The four new enhancements just unveiled by Socl are:
Picotale
Have you ever wondered how to create a meme? Picotale gives you a fun and quick way to generate short stories or memes. Powered by Bing technology, you simply enter a search phrase and watch Picotale deliver an image that includes text. You keep hitting go again and again until you find the right combo you like and then post it on Socl… like so.cool – even if it is superimposing on top of another meme-generated superimposed image.
Collage
Now you can upload images from a personal device or computer and then mix and match with other content harvested from around the Web.
Video Party
Video Party allows you to put together video playlists from YouTube, Bing, Vimeo and then chat about them alongside other Socl users.
BLINK
Socl also provides space for sharing your BLINKs with the broader community. Blink is the Interactive Visual Media Group in Microsoft Research which also just released two apps today, BLINK Cliplets app for Windows 8, which lets you to combine and loop static and dynamic elements from short video clips, and an update for Windows Phone 8, which lets you capture bursts of images when you take photos as to select the best shot.
Check out the so.cl network which wonders “Why just post when you can create?”
What do you think? Could Microsoft get lucky this time and finally gain some social traction with these new apps?
