Quiet please, so.cl is sleeping

Last week I joined Microsoft's so.cl on a BETA invite and had a little look around. It seems to be very video-centric (no surprises there) and has followed the Pinterest model of Facebook ID sign in to Skynet all your friends and build an audience rapidly. 

Apart from that, I've filed it neatly in my 'sleeper site' category and really don't have much else to say about it. 

What's a 'sleeper site'?

I call sites or social networks that I don't initially have a lot of use for 'sleeper sites'. I'll reserve an account, have a quick play and then leave it to simmer away and build some features and users. 

I want to hug you and squeeze you

There are very few sites that I instantly fall head over heels in love with. 

Trademe was love at first site (I used to be a TopSeller). Same with Typepad, Twitter and, this cute little guy, Posterous. Instantly, hundreds of hours of chirpy dial up iHug modem time. I had brief affairs with Yahoo, webmonkey, myspace, ICQ, Viddler and about another 20-odd sites if my namechk records are accurate.  

Facebook was a sleeper. LinkedIn was a sleeper. Tumblr has recently risen from three years of obscurity to 'chosen child' status in my browser by attracting a large, young, super creative and commercial-free audience that curates exceptional content rapidly with the reblog feature. 

I'm not sure what causes an awkward social reject to turn into a 'killer app' but I would never be silly enough to write off big players like Microsoft (so.cl) and Google (Google +) in the social network space. 

For now, I'll just leave them sleeping.

Posted via email from cjlambert's posterous