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Is Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) planning its own social network? It's possible. Yesterday, Fusible.com unearthed a landing page at socl.com that's operated by Mr. Softy's research team.
"With Tulalip, you can find what you need to know and share what you know easier than ever," read the page before the mockup was taken down, replaced by a wide-screen apology for posting ‘Tulalip’ before it was ready.
No one's saying exactly what the project is, but sign-in buttons for Twitter and Facebook suggest that it could be a TweetDeck rival for broadcasting to and culling from multiple social networks. Or maybe CEO Steve Ballmer finally took my advice and commissioned a team to create a social search engine to complement Bing.
Whatever Tulalip is, it seems Ballmer isn't content to merely partner with Facebook. Given the early enthusiasm for Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) latest social effort, Google+, I understand why.
Yet now may not be the time to stand alone when it comes to social media. Facebook is a great partner with a big moat filled by its relationship with social-gaming superstar Zynga. Why not do more to bring Facebook into Office 365?
Or if nothing else, learn from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM). One -- Apple -- introduced a social network because it could and quickly saw it go nowhere (i.e., Ping). The other -- salesforce.com -- introduced a social network to enhance its business and won customers as a result (i.e., Chatter).
Be careful where you go with this, Mr. Softy, or Tulalip could end up giving you a bloody lip. Do you agree? Disagree? Please vote in the poll below and then weigh in using the comments box below. You can also add Microsoft to your watchlist for up-to-date analysis on the stock as soon as it's published.
