Software giant Microsoft has taken its first official step towards social networking.
The US company has launched the networking site ‘so.cl' (pronounced as social) targeting students.
The new venture will help students around the world exchange study and research contents through Microsoft's Bing application. Students can also discuss with the researchers through this site.
The site also mentions on its homepage, “With so.cl you can share your search and help others discover what they might be looking for.”
The announcement comes a day after the world's largest social networking site Facebook's shares plunged 11 per cent on Nasdaq after listing.
The concept started just as any other social networking site, in some college in the US last December.
But, unlike Facebook or Google+, one can automatically “Sign in' if he or she has a Facebook account or Windows Live ID such as MSN or Hotmail. Facebook and Google+, when started, required an invitation from a user.
Microsoft has also started the Web site at one go for users around the world and not in a phased manner like other players in the market.
“So.cl is an experimental research project, created by FUSE Labs (Microsoft's own lab) and focused on the future of social experiences and learning,” one of the spokespersons from Microsoft said.
However, the spokesperson also said that the so.cl team “intends to process new sign-ups as quickly as possible.”
However, there are some riders for using so.cl. One cannot share any self discovered link or pictures unlike other networking sites. The users can only share links or materials shared through Bing or found through Bing search.
The company from its side has also said that the new site is not competing with Facebook or Google+.
“Microsoft so.cl is not a fully-fledged social network and it is far too early to even suggest it could be a rival to Google+ or Facebook, and the chances are it never will be,” Mr Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum, in independent research firm said.
He said the fact that so.cl is targeted at students, echoes Facebook's beginnings and has made many assume it is a Facebook clone. But it is, as Microsoft stresses, an experiment and designed to be layer on existing social networks.
The opposite approach of Google, which entered social networking all guns blazing with a full on service, is having modest success, he said.
“If so.cl gains significant traction, which we think unlikely, then Microsoft might well ramp up the service with additional features, particularly mobile where Microsoft can tap into the Windows Phone platform,” Mr Zoller added.