We’re pleased to announce that you can become the moderator of your favorite collections and collect with your friends - Socl collections are sure to be even better than ever!

Collection Moderators

Now, every collection has at least one moderator who comes from the Socl community. Moderators have the ability to edit the title, description and tags of a collection. Moderators may also remove inappropriate or off topic posts from a collection at their discretion.

You can become a collection moderator in a variety of ways. If you create a “Me” Collection, you are the moderator. You can also invite moderators to join you in contributing to the collection (those invited will receive a notification that they’ve been invited to moderate which they can choose to accept or decline), essentially creating an “Us” Collection.

In the case of “Everyone” Collections, the original creator is designated moderator, but from that point on moderator designation is based on active participation in the collection. Active participants in a collection can eventually replace original moderators based on participation in and contribution to the quality of that collection.

“Us” Collections

With the addition of Collection Moderators, we are now offering a third type of Collection – “Us” Collections. Now you can invite others to moderate a collection with you; you can also decide if you would like that collection to be visible to everyone or only your co-contributors.

As always, please let us know what you think and happy making!

Today we made it even easier to share the Socl love… Now you can easily share any Socl post to more of your favorite social networks, such as Pinterest and Tumblr.

Simply click “share” at the base of a post you’d like to share… Below and left is a lovely post made by our own Cheri Walters. I used the new share feature to include this post in my Tumblr blog (top right) and on my “Love Love Love” Pinterest Board (bottom left).

Happy Making!

It’s almost Spring here in the Pacific Northwest. To celebrate, FUSE Labs is rolling out a fresh Socl design featuring many new capabilities we think you’re going to love.

Here’s a summary of what’s inside the “Spring 2013 Collection”:

 - Simplified site navigation, including:

• create a post button
• discover (full site search and discovery)
• pinned menu for quick access to notifications, messages, setting, parties and about
• centered Socl logo to refresh the page
• single click access to your profile
• feed pivots between following and everyone

 - Collections and Interests merged into one concept

• collections curated by everyone (formerly Interests)
• collections curated by individuals, including private collections
• collection descriptions
• tags now done at the collection level rather than the post level and applied only by collection followers

- Better post creation, featuring:

• drag and drop
• resize
• shuffle
• share to other social networks

- Personal opportunity cards to help build your following feed

- Private messages

- In line editing of profile information

- Enhanced discovery, search and presentation of related content

- Enhanced first time user experience

Many of the ideas in the new design have come directly from you. Thank you so much for your continued support.

We sincerely hope you enjoy the new Socl. Happy making!

For the Socl faithful, we thought we’d create a brief Q and A regarding the Spring 2013 release.

What happened to Interests?

Socl Interests have been merged into Collections. Collections can now be curated by an group (formerly Interest) or an individual.

I can’t find a Collection for one of the Interests I followed - what happened?

It is possible that the Interest did not meet the activity level required to be merged into a Collection or was not in keeping with the Socl terms of service. If you feel an Interest is missing in error, please let us know via Socl Public Feedback and we’ll look into it.

How do I tag posts now?

Tagging of posts is now done at the collection level. All the posts in a collection now carry the same consistent tags, aiding our ability to surface related content in the other parts of Socl and reducing the chance of tag misuse.

What are some of the other new features in the Spring 2013 release of Socl?

For a summary of the Spring 2013 release, see our blog post announcing the update.

As some of the Socl faithful have noticed, Socl is at TEDActive 2013, thanks to our colleagues at Bing.

TEDActive attendees are accessing a special version of Socl to create and share collages inspired by TEDActive 2013 Talks.

As posted on the Bing Search Blog earlier today:

…we partnered with Microsoft Research’s FUSE Labs, creators of a Bing-powered technology called So.cl, and built a special area of this research platform for TEDActive attendees, available at TED.so.cl. Here, conference-goers can assemble images, research links, videos, and text into collages that express their reactions and associations around the TED Talks. Once completed, attendees can share their collages not only with those at the conference, but with anyone who wishes to view the real-time, online feed. 

Well over 100 Socl collages have been posted thus far… We at FUSE Labs are delighted by this novel use of Socl and hope you enjoy the posts!

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.

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…

Read More

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.