Microsoft briefly leaks social search tool Tulalip on Socl.com
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Microsoft published prototype designs of a new social search engine called Tulalip to the URL Socl.com Thursday, but then quickly took down the website, putting an apology in its place.
‘Thanks for stopping by,’ the replacement message at Socl.com said on Friday. ‘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.’
The brief posting of Tulalip on Thursday was found by a blogger identified only as J.B., who wrote about it on the website domain news site Fusible.com.
‘The four letter domain socl.com would complement bing.com,’ the Fusible post said. ‘Although the site isn’t operational, visitors can get an idea of where Microsoft is going with the service called ‘Tulalip’, which also happens to be the name of a group of Native American tribes located not far from Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered.’
J.B. snapped a screenshot of what could be found at Socl.com before Microsoft took it down -- a green rectangle with the word ‘Welcome’ above a short description that read ‘With Tulalip you can Find what you need and Share what you know easier than ever.’
Sign-in options for the site appeared to be offered for both Facebook and Twitter users -- no Google+ option there -- but when links were clicked, they didn’t work, the blog post said.
Officials at Microsoft were unavailable to comment beyond what is already posted at Socl.com, that what was published wasn’t meant for the world to see.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Twitter.com/nateog