Business Bytes
Renee Oricchio

Is Microsoft Plotting a Google+ Competitor?

What the heck is Mirosoft's "Tulalip," and what exactly is it going to be capable of?

 

Its code name is "Tulalip," and according to a green splash page that has since disappeared from a Microsoft-owned Web address (www.soci.com), Tulalip is some sort of yet to be fully defined "social search" hybrid that is part application, part search engine. 

Again according to the disappearing splash page (which, don't worry, lives on in screen grabs republished all over the Web), the whatever-it-is would allow users to:

  • Read Tweets from your timeline.
  • See who you follow and follow new people.
  • Update your profile.
  • Post Tweets for you.

Microsoft has admitted that "whoops" it was published on the open Web by accident. If you go to www.soci.com, this is what you'll find now; absolutely nothing! Not so earlier this week when Fusible.com first published the story.

The big question, of course, is this Tulalip-slash-Soci.com-thing going to be Microsoft's answer to Google+?

What do you think?

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio