One of the best things that I enjoy about Socl is the discovery of new things. Today I posted a collage of people with painted red faces. It turned out that one of the images was about an Indian Ritual dating back 1000 years.(See image bottom left.)

Now, I would have never known about this ritual unless this a member of the Socl community from India, Vattavila, pointed it out.

And he created a post about the ritual called Theyyam which he says embraces almost all of the caste systems in India. I thought that was super interesting!

So today I learned more about the Indian history and culture through my random posting of red painted faces. That is Socl, a place to be surprised and discover through not only your search, but by other users knowledge. And with all the cultures from around the world who are online all the time on Socl, we have great perspectives in a flash.

It has been really great to see how Socl users have taken ownership of their community. The site is designed to be intuitive, but just like any new experience it helps if there is someone around to give a little tour. As a community manager my favorite moments are helping new users achieve their first “a-ha” Socl moments, but nothing gives me greater pride than seeing a how-to post created by one of our very own community members Adam Rifai.

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Last week we held our ninth annual Social Computing Symposium on the topic:  “Off the Radar.” Inspired by Clive Thompson’s closing talk from 2012, we focused on populations and topics we forget to discuss, often hiding in plain sight.  Our goal with the event is to bring together a small group of diverse people to help inspire and shed light on novel ideas and trends in the area of social.

& thanks to the stellar folks who made this all happen:  danah Boyd, Liz Lawley, Clay Shirky, Brady Forrest, Clive Thompson, Tom Coates, Anil Dash, Gabriella Coleman, John Borthwick, Baratunde Thurston, Tricia Wang and NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Department.

We only wish we could include more people, so sharing out the recorded videos of many of the presentations. Here are all the talks, some really amazing ones- and the agenda below. Enjoy!

Day 1:

Welcome, Intros & proposed Audience Choice Talks

Stories and insights from around the world, organized by Tricia Wang

People who *aren’t* using socially enabled tools, and why organized by Liz Lawley

Slightly Belated Opening Talk, by Clay Shirky

“Innovation in Unexpected Places”, organized by Baratunde Thurston

Evening: Audience Choice Talks & PowerPoint Karaoke, organized by Brady Forrest 

Day 2:

“The Human Microphone: Amplification of Political Dissent”, organized by Biella Coleman

“Food, Government, Surfing and Thrifting”, organized by Brady Forrest

Socl Interests allow you to deepen your connection with the people and ideas that matter most to you. In this post you will learn how to use Socl Interests in five easy steps. Let’s get started!

1. Socl Interests defined

Socl Interests are public groups organized around post content. When you create a post, all you have to do is tag it with an interest name (an existing interest, or a new one you start). Your post will then be added to that Interest. Some of the popular interests on Socl are dreams, music, photography, math in nature and best of socl. 

2. Tag your Interests

First create a collage post using the green post creator tool bar at the top of your page. You will see that I created a post on Van Gogh, and then tagged it as art. Because I have tagged my post as art it will now be added to the Art Interest Page. Simple. 

3. Access your Interests

To view the Interests you follow simply:

Want to learn about another person’s Interests? Simply visit their profile, then click on their Interests tab located under their avatar. This is especially useful when determining if you would like to follow someone. You will see in the above example that I have visited Brianna’s profile and can now click on her personal Interests tab. 

Have you ever received a postcard scrawled with a joyful “wish you were here”? Consider this blog post just such an invitation. After the unveiling of the latest and greatest version of Socl earlier this month, we definitely wish you were here (if you aren’t already). 

Before there was social networking or status updates there were postcards. Back in the not-so-distant past, to convey a quippy visual sentiment to friends and family meant writing a few lines on the back of a stamped picture and sending it via post. Of course, now we have sites like Socl to serve as a kind of modern day postcard, albeit a much faster and more dynamic version. Now Socl lets users build posts from many different sources easily and elegantly, as this “postcard” from Nikos (comprised of vintage Holiday postcards) demonstrates. 

There are many seasonally inspired conversations happening on the new Socl. Come share your story.

We’re excited to provide you with a new way to express yourself on Socl – Collections.

Collections are personally curated sets of posts. To create a collection, simply:

1. click on ‘collect’ at the base of any post
2. give the collection a name (or add the post to one of your existing collections)
3. view your collections from your Me page

You can create as many collections as you like, and of course you can follow collections created by others. You’re the curator! What will you collect today? We can’t wait to see…and as always, let us know what you think.

Another helpful tab found on your Me page is the “conversations” tab. Here you can keep track of ongoing conversations with other users and engage in a deeper dialogue that extends over time. You can use the filter bar to move between seeing only exchanged messages or your conversations (which include all your activity around posts, such as likes and comments as well). It’s exciting to see how conversations unfold. 

If you find yourself inspired to make a post based on some insightful message, you can “riff” off the conversation right from this page, as happened here with Wall-e’s message.

We’re excited to know what you think! Come give the new Socl a whirl and let us know your feedback. Watch this space for more tours of the new UI coming later this week! We’ve got lots to show you.

As you may know, Socl began as an experiment in social search for students and learning. Over the past several months, we’ve watched Socl evolve into a place where people connect over shared interests expressed through beautiful post collages.

We appreciate your continued feedback which is helping us to gain more insight every day and improve how we can all communicate, learn and share our everyday lives. We’ve been busy redesigning Socl to match how you’re using it, and starting today, we’d like you to give the new Socl a spin at www.so.cl and let us know what you think.

Here are a few changes you’ll notice right away…

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Socl is a website with users from all across the globe. The site does have an in-line translation feature, but what makes a joke funny often times doesn’t lend itself to jumping languages easily. Either you get it or you don’t.

That’s exactly what happened in a post by Marc on Socl. Even he was at a loss for words (in English) as to why the image he was sharing from a Dutch insurance company was funny. 

As I was looking at the picture, a sudden flash of childhood memory came back to me involving an old holiday tradition centered around reindeer visiting for the holidays. I did a bit of Socl searching and discovered my memory was about a Dutch tradition called Sinterklass.  My mother’s family is part Dutch, and as a child our family would align our shoes by the door and fill them with carrots on the night of December 4th. The next morning, the carrots would be gone - or left with big bite marks in them - and small presents would appear! Of course I shared my findings in a Socl post.

From an esoteric Dutch-centric humorous picture straight to reconnecting with family traditions. This is what I love about Socl. It moves just as a great conversation does, navigating through time and space, connected by threads as wild and innovative as imagination itself. Come discover what waits to be remembered on Socl.

En este tutorial, les muestro como agregar un enlace en una entrada en Socl con varias fotos del enlace. En la parte donde digo “hago click” en 1:16 minutos del video, estoy refieriendo al ingreso en el teclado.