Microsoft's Socl social network gets iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 apps
The Microsoft Research team launched Socl in beta form a little over a year ago — and yes, it is still very much alive. Now, Redmond's experiment could potentially have a more extensive reach …
Context & Ripple Effects
Socl began in December 2011 as a Microsoft Research social-search project, then quietly opened as a beta network in May 2012 with little fanfare and no native clients. A Windows Phone 8 app landed the day before this story, and the same week Microsoft extended it to iOS and Android — turning a browser-bound research experiment into a genuinely cross-platform product.
The pickup was broad for a research side project — The Verge, iMore, TechHive, Softpedia and others all covered the release on or about December 10, 2013 — which says more about curiosity around what Microsoft Research ships than about Socl's own user base, which no coverage quantifies.
First-order effects
- Socl's addressable audience jumps from desktop browsers to three app-store ecosystems at once, letting Microsoft Research test its social features against users who never touch Windows.
- The Windows Phone 8 store gains another first-party title within days of the platform version, marginally thickening Microsoft's own app catalog.
Second-order effects
- Each Microsoft Research app on iOS and Android normalizes Redmond shipping consumer software on rival platforms, raising internal pressure to justify why any Microsoft-branded experience should stay Windows-exclusive.
- Competing social networks face one more free, ad-free experimental entrant in their app stores — negligible as a rival today, but a data-gathering probe into sharing behavior Microsoft doesn't otherwise see.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Microsoft Research functions as a low-risk incubator whose survivors graduate to company-wide multi-platform strategy — with the open CEO succession question at Microsoft in late 2013 making the eventual owner of that strategy uncertain.
The trend: Microsoft's research projects are migrating from web-only experiments to native apps across iOS, Android and Windows Phone, using competitor platforms as distribution for ideas that once lived behind Windows.