Leaked Website Hints at Microsoft Social Networking Site

[Jack]

A landing page for what appears to be a Microsoft social-networking site was discovered Thursday night, sparking rumors that the software giant is building a social network to rival Google+. But not Facebook.

Before it was replaced with a tight-lipped message from Microsoft, Socl.com displayed a welcome note for a service called "Tulalip" (the name of an Indian tribe in Washington).
"With Tulalip you can find what you need and share what you know easier than ever," it read. On the side of the screen (see below) the page showed dummy buttons for signing in through Facebook and Twitter.

When you click into the site now, you'll find it replaced with a message from Microsoft.
"Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn't mean to, honest," it reads.

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[Jack]

I'm sure that this leak was unintentional (NOT!) ....just like the latest Windows 8 builds always manage to get themselves into the wild before any official release. Having people to talk about a project even before it's officially realease it's a great marketing trick,just look at Google+ , their Invitation System made everyone talk and be curios about this project....and even if the world never seen this product in action,everyone wants a piece.
Does the world really need another social network ? My answer would be 'NO' but Microsoft is a big company, so they have to create this service just to cover a niche.

 

[Dejan]

I'm sure that this leak was unintentional (NOT!) ....just like the latest Windows 8 builds always manage to get themselves into the wild before any official release. Having people to talk about a project even before it's officially realease it's a great marketing trick,just look at Google+ , their Invitation System made everyone talk and be curios about this project....and even if the world never seen this product in action,everyone wants a piece.
Does the world really need another social network ? My answer would be 'NO' but Microsoft is a big company, so they have to create this service just to cover a niche.

I agree Jack, these details aren't so easy to get your hands on after all, I probably wouldn't be able to come up with a way, unless the company themselves want it to get out there, they want hype and popularity. The more hype there is before the release, the more people are going to be using after it's actually been released. It's a great method to be all mysterious and get people talking about it. I also agree that we don't need a new social network, every big company right now seems to be getting into it, it won't be long before we hear news about Apple building it's own social network (my guess) or some other big company.

 

[Vextor]

It was definitely intentional. All they wanted to do was to get some hype so more people would use it. It's like Windows 8, a popularity trick. As MrXidus said on an earlier post (Noel or Liam Gallagher Twiiter Hacked or something), any publicity is good publicity

 

[jamescv7]

Its like they want to compete with Google + and make some features that will be same as Google+.