New Microsoft social search service called Tulalip revealed on socl.com

Yesterday I discovered Microsoft was the new owner of the domain socl.com by chance, when I was trying to learn more about the mystery buyer of social.com.

A teaser landing page has been revealed online today on socl.com and it appears to be a new “social search” service by Microsoft as shown in the picture above.

The four letter domain socl.com would complement bing.com.
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.
“With Tulalip you can Find what you need and Share what you know easier than ever”, reads a message on the home page.
You’ll also be able to sign in using your Facebook or Twitter account.

At the time of this post, the links on the home page such as “See How it Works”, don’t work.

[Update Thursday, July 14th, 2011 8:46 PM: Matt McGee of Search Engine Land got in touch with a Microsoft spokesperson who had this to say about Socl.com: "Socl.com is an internal design project from one of Microsoft’s research teams which was mistakenly published to the web." Microsoft has taken the site down and posted a message stating, "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."]