0 Comments

Microsoft recently “accidentally” leaked information about their new social media platform called “Tulalip.” That’s right, I said “Tulalip.” The name “Tulalip” pays homage to a group of Native Americans located near Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash. headquarters. Tulalip will be found on the domain Socl.com, which Microsoft recently bought for $2.5M. Socl.com has been taken down after the “accident,” so no need to search for it but here is a screen capture of the homepage Tulalip published before it was quickly withdrawn after the “leak.”

At the top of the page there’s a search box which isn’t “plugged” in yet and next to the box is the word “OPEN.” My guess is it’s an attempt to be cute, analogous to Google’s famous “I’m Feeling Lucky” icon. The page has links that aren’t live yet, including “See How it Works,” “Terms of Service” and “Privacy Statement.” Facebook and Twitter social buttons are placed prominently on the page. The Twitter authorization page confirms Tulalip is an “experimental app” from Microsoft Research. The Twitter authorization screen says that Tulalip will be able to “update your profile” and “post tweets for you,” among other things— which implies Tulalip may offer some kind of social networking management tools, along the line of a social media aggregator (see “The Conversation: Lesson 9”). The Facebook button is not functional, so I can’t see what features Tulalip would access in Facebook.

Is this Microsoft’s response to Google+? It’s too early to tell, but with Microsoft buying domain names and making this “error” within two weeks of Google+’s launch, if it walks like a duck… bottom line, this move has the potential to be a game changer.

Speculation abounds that Tulalip will be the first of what is known as a hybrid social-search networking service; a social search engine, which may have features closely aligned to the Bing search engine or might wrap Bing search into it. This is extremely interesting from a “search engine optimization” perspective. In November of 2010, Google and Bing made a rare announcement shedding light on the algorithm they use to rank websites and other content in search. They said, Bing reported the fact that social influence, i.e. your level of participation on various social websites like Twitter, Facebook and others, impacts your organic search results and that Bing, by some estimates, handles as much as 15 percent of internet search traffic and is gaining steam. If that is accurate, it is a smart “launching pad” for a Microsoft social effort. Bing also cut a deal with Facebook a few years ago giving it the advantage over Google of incorporating data from Facebook in its search algorithm, leaving Google out of the “Like” loop, as I like to call it. This deal has caused Google to lag behind Bing in social search cues. So Microsoft using this advantage over Google to penetrate this already crowded space makes sense.

A visit to the Socl.com domain today brought up the following message: “Thanks for stopping by! Socl.com is an internal design project from a team at Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the Web. We didn’t mean to . . . honest!”

Do you believe them? I’d love to hear your thoughts – leave me a comment below or come over to OnToptics on “LinkedIn” or “Facebook” to continue the discussion and be sure to join the new Facebook group “ODs on Facebook”, a new out-of-the-box effort set up just for fun, professional banter and camaraderie. Don’t forget to pick up my book “Searchial Marketing”; a step-by-step “how to” guide on implementing social media for your business.

- Alan N. Glazier, OD, FAAO
Author: Searchial Marketing: How Social Media Drives Search Optimization in Web 3.0
Founder/CEO
Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care
Rockville, MD

Twitter Handle: @EyeInfo
Blog: http://www.youreyesite.net
Website: YourEyeSite.com

Check out “Schedgehog.com”