Microsoft gives a sneak preview of its social network Socl

SOFTWARE FLOGGER Microsoft has given a sneak preview of its upcoming social network called 'Socl', which is set to rival Facebook and Google+.

Microsoft had hinted at such a service back in July when the Socl.com web site was accidentally published before being taken offline. Many postulated that it was a secret social network that Microsoft was working on and now that appears to have been the case.

The Verge got some hands on time with Socl, which Microsoft said is a research project and has only been tested by a select group of people to date, but will go into public testing at some stage in the near future.

From the initial screenshots it seems that Socl is almost a ripoff of Google+, particularly in terms of its interface style and layout. While obviously it will share a lot in common with Google+ and Facebook, it leans far more towards the former than the latter, suggesting that Microsoft believes that Google will be the long-term winner in the battle between those two giants.

Socl comes with a number of features, including social search, tagging, and video partying, all of which share strong similarities with Google+.

For example, tagging allows users to tag topics of interest, which will then display a feed relating to that topic, and this is the exact same concept behind the Sparks feature of Google+.

The video party feature is also extremely similar to Hangouts, in that multiple friends can enter the chat room. Instead of displaying webcam videos of the users, however, it's designed for watching existing videos. Only Youtube is supported at the moment, and since this is a Google product we can probably expect Google to add a similar feature to Google+ or upgrade its Hangouts to allow video sharing.

While Socl has a few interesting features, it lacks a lot of the strong concepts like Circles that make Google+ a viable contender against Facebook. Without something new to put on the table Socl is unlikely to garner enough interest from web users of rival the existing social networks. µ