Microsoft releases official Socl app for Windows Phone to match their growing community-site

By Abhishek Baxi
published

Developed by Microsoft Research FUSE Labs, Socl — pronounced social — lets you create, collect, and share stuff you love. From rich visual collages to short animated media and memes, Socl gives you a creative outlet through posts that take seconds to create, collect, and share on Socl, as well as other social networks.

Microsoft Research has just released the companion app for Socl for Windows Phone. Prior to this release, the Socl website was the only way to post or share content from your mobile device.

The app gives you the ability to quickly create image collages and animated memes, and share them with your friends and family. You can also organize content into collections and manage your posts within the app. The app gives you notifications about community activity on the content you like.

In the brief time I spent with the app, I found that it isn’t a smooth experience and I lost a couple posts that appeared as if they went through. Clearly, there are some issues that need to be ironed in the upcoming updates.

You can download the free companion app for Windows Phone 8 devices from the Windows Phone Store. If you are on Socl already, it’s a great app to create and share content, and if you aren’t, the app might just be an interesting incentive for you to have a look. Let us know how you like the app.

Source: The Fire Hose

94 Comments
  • Hell yes about time
  • My words exactly. +1 or no that's google. I meant :)
  • Yes❕.. This is what we need.. It took MS long enough❕.. If released on other platforms this could be MS's key back to popularity... It's basically a pinterest for men❕
  • Exactly! and now we just need the Windows Store version of the same. :)
  • Yes!
  • Just a web app. Nothing to see here.
  • Downloaded.
  • It's such a great network, deserves more people but at least they are not forcing it to us..
  • NOOOOOOOO, 1GB RAAAAAM, I HAVE A 620!!!
  • +521
  • such a disappointment... waiting so long - and this...
  • You guys without the 1gb ram....just use the mobile site, its exactly identical, and fully functional
  • We're working to remove the 1gb restriction. A store update is coming.
  • Please check the app FaceSwap, in WP8 512mb of ram not work. I miss this, in my ex Lumia 710 WP7 512RAM works. Tnx!
  • "You guys without 1 gb ram" :)  Yeah, this sounds great, it defines a f-ing large group of people, you know... About mobile site - I use it, as I used it for a long time, thank you for reminding me about obvious things...
  • Not only that but the mobile site doesn't work all that well or have notifications.
  • We have pushed a new build of the app into the WP store which fixes some bugs and removes the 1GB restriction. Thank you for your patience.
  • Thank you :)
  • Store link? Or it didn't happen
  • Me too!, how antisocl of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Downloading now :)
  • Okay, so, I joined Socl early on, mostly as a placeholder, but I've never visited it since.  Same with Google+.  I just don't see this taking off even as much as Google+, and nobody I know uses THAT.  So, why keep breathing life into another social networking site?  I don't get it.
  • It's a research site. It's not meant for commercial purposes. Using the site gives MS ideas for what may work and what may not work in future social products or services.
  • Because nobody ever knows what's going to be the next big thing in Social networking.. It's like playing the lottery.. You can't win if you don't play... It's a small investment for a potential big payoffs...
  • So, since you don´t use it, nor none of your friends, they should just kill it. Makes sense.
  • Sadly this app needs min. 1GB RAM, hope they can make it also available on devices with lower RAM. Would love it, to use it even if I don't use so.cl so often. ^^
  • Thanks for the feedback... We're working to remove this restriction and a Store update will be coming soon. On WP8 there's a crashing bug that some low memory users may run into which is why put the restriction in place.  Given the feedback and the fact most users will rarely if ever encounter this bug we decided to go ahead and open it up to all WP8 devices while we contnue to investigate the problem.
  • That sounds great, looking forword to it. I want to take the chance, hopefully I can do this, with the IE (v11.0.1) I can't see the so.cl page. If I use the dev tools to look what's  wrong I get a Access denied in the JavaScript. And if I use Firefox to open the page, I get a timeout, site ist just working with Metro IE...
  • Hmm... Not sure what's happening there. I just tried and IE 11 under Modern Shell works fine for me.
  • Maybe I found the problem. If I uncheck the protected-mode (which is set to standard) of the IE it works, so it has something to do with these settings~
  • NOT Available for Lumia 720 !!
  • 1Gb ram to use social app??????? Wtf!??!?!?!?
  • Welcome to the windows phone world.
  • Fucking finally!!!
  • Finally!
  • About time.
  • Hahahahahaahaha and know MS gives us an example of how to make an optimized app to run in the most is the WPs out there...
  • i have account for desktop version and it's SUCKS Microsoft. !!!!!
  • I'm happy that you guys are posting a non-region specific link to the Windows Phone app in the Store. Kudus!
  • We always use the global link for any app in the Store. Even if an app is region specific. Using the global link just makes things easier for everyone. 
  • Also, can you stop the annoying habbit of linking tags to your article instead of links to the actual sites? When I click on "Socl" I expect it to open the Socl site, not to the list of articles about it, having the current article at the top. Thanks.
  • Agreed about the link in the paragraph acting like a tag and not a link to the Socl site. Kinda lame.
  • Why does it need 1 GB of ram ??? Any way I could run it on my 625?
  • I would like to see Microsoft do the following: 1. buy Vimeo, 2. buy Twitch, 3. integrate so.cl, Vimeo, Twitch, Photosynth, and the Xbox One activity feed / friends' list to make a unique social networking site, one that allows you to post your Blink gifs, Photosynths, personal videos (i.e. Vimeo), game clips (i.e. Twitch), other things such as Xbox activity and achievements, and then just your own status updates (which could be posted directly to this new social network, which I would call Twitch because it's catchy, or have it pull your status updates from Facebook and Twitter). That is what I would do.
  • That sounds beast and would actually be successful because it offers something different!
  • Twitch? What for, foreign television? IE. Soccer fans?
  • For sharing video game clips from Xbox One. If they did all that, they'd have a pretty unique social networking site, one that focused on unique content (Blink GIFs, Photosynth panoramas, Vimeo videos, Twitch game clips, Xbox gamer activity [games played, beaten, achievements earned, etc.], status posts, accessible on Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows Phone, Windows 8/RT, or any PC with a browser. It could be pretty cool, especially if Microsoft really picked up development of Xbox games on Windows Phone and Windows 8 (speaking of that: #SaveXboxWP, join the movement on Twitter), where more casual gamers play (like my mother, for instance), it could reach a wider audience too.
  • Wtf!?!?! 1GB to run a basic app!!!! I have a 920 but wanted to use it on the 520 i also have, grrrrrr...
  • Its on Android too, so they better have made an app for us too :p
  • Totally forgot about that 'social network' xD
  • The app is pretty bad. It feels like it's just a wrapper for IE. Not fluid at all
  • I like the app and yes its not the greatest but thanks you Microsoft. I don't see a translate feature for the foreign post
  • Requires 1GB minimum RAM? For a social media app?
  • I wept with joy
  • Only Windows Phone 8....
  • App is also available on iOS and Android.
  • Er, I think he/she meant not available for WP 7.x
  • Oh... No. Unfortunately, WP7 was out of scope due to the older browser on WP7 devices.
  • Feedback heard... We're working to remove the 1gb minimum so we can open it up to all devices.  Look for an update in the store as soon as we can get it through.
  • Are you on the development team?
  • yes
  • Cool, wanted to say good job for this pretty cool idea and I hope you evolve it even further :)
    (maybe pms like snapchat)
  • Wow, about time they produce this app, was hard to understand why this hadn't existed around the same time of the Blink app for WP, guess im happy it finally exists.
  • Skype Soc. is where its at!!! Get on with it. hifi video on messaging! Pike your poison, MS!
  • Bloody hell, I forgot SoCl existed, I haven't used in about 7-8 months.
  • And yet again... Microsoft makes something new and just dismisses the old devices. What us 7x device holders, everyone don't own a Windows Phone 8 device yet... Smgdh! Shame on Microsoft
  • Get over it, WP7 is dead. Why would devs support it when WP8 is here. This app also has a 1GB RAM requirement at the moment but I believe that will only be reduced to 512MB with the update, if you can find a WP7 device that satisfies that requirement then the devs might support it on WP7!!
  • Got. It
  • Finally
  • I can't imagine why this app needs 1GB of RAM
  • If you read the comments instead of skimming them before posting then you would know why it has a 1GB requirement!!
  • Some people don't want to read all the comments for every article they're interested in. I don't blame them, most comment sections are cesspools of socially retarded jerks. Not saying that applies to wpcentral (it doesn't), but I don't blame anyone for disregarding comment sections anywhere anymore. Also, jeez, not everyone has the time.
  • The 1gb minimum was do to a crashing bug on low memory phones that appears to be out of our control. We've reported the bug to the appropriate team and decided to lock this release to high memory phones given we don't like releasing software we know could crash. In hind sight the crash is unlikely to hit many people as it only comes up when you've created several posts so we're in the process of removing the restriction.  Just be aware that if you create too many posts (I think it's 4) on a low memory WP8 device it's likely to crash and we have yet to find a work around to the issue.    
  • FINALLY
  • Wait, nevermind, doesn't work for vast majority of WP users. Shame, I've been waiting a long time for this.
  • Like I said above, if you read the comments instead of skimming them then you would know why the 1GB requirement is in place!!
  • A. Some of us have lives outside of message boards and don't read every single comment. B. I never said I didn't understand why. But they can optimize these things, especially since the majority of WP owners have less than a gig.
  • Its just a web app
  • Question is, do I need another social app or for that matter, join another social site? I mean there's Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Hipstamatic, 4square, etc! I can't have all these taking up space on my phone! I need an all-in-one that I easily manage yet more secure than FB, at the same time have all the awesomeness Oggl. Is this app it?
  • Agree!
  • It's unique, making photo and information collages. I enjoy it. The app is more for users who are already aware of the site's concept.
  • Thank you for info.
  • Cool. I dig socl... looks good so far!
  • Really well designed, but the performance is sluggish, at best. Please fix because I really want to post more, but right now it's painful to navigate.
  • i want this on my surface
  • So glad this is finally an app.
  • Another social network? Came on MS, things have changed... Messages apps os growing fast and you still thinking about another Facebook? No way to this Project...
  • All bug here... the screen doesn't scroll
  • 1 gb ram wtf
  • Not for 512 ram. :-(
  • @ Steven Ickman, I am lumia 521 owner. Please give me update when you get rid off the 1 gb ram requirement. 
  • Lol, 1GB RAM needed :)  
  • Yusss!! I've been asking this forever
  • Was real excited to see this until I tried it out and realized it's just a web app. Would love to see a full app that utilizes the modern/metro UI.