Is Microsoft really building a social network called Tulalip?
(CBS) - Not to be left out of the race, Microsoft is rumored to have leaked a social networking site.
The blog Fusible pointed out that the software company purchased the domain name Socl.com on July 2011.
A teaser landing page on Socl.com was revealed on July 14 that hinted at a social search site called Tulalip.
Currently, Socl.com's homepage has a simple message: "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."
To further fuel the fire, Microsoft's broker Marksmen, a brand monitoring agency, also picked up Social.com recently for $2.6 million. The company did not reveal who purchased the domain name.
These tidbits leave us with a few questions: Is Microsoft really starting a social network? If so, why?
It's no secret that even the giants in the social networking world have a hard time keeping users interested. The social networking crown has been passed down over the years from Friendster to MySpace. Even now, current web king, Facebook, has Google+ to contend with.
So why would Microsoft want to shift their focus and enter such a fickle game? They already own a stake in Facebook. And if they joined the ring of possible "Facebook killers," would they be trying to commit Internet suicide? Only time will tell if the project will come to fruition.
