As some of you know, I also do blogging and posting for a few other sites, just as a way to spread the word about my blog and such. On one of the sites, Juniper’s Champion Community, there was a thread on Microsoft’s new So.Cl. It’s a new social media site, but while many might dismiss it as another attempt to compete with the large sites like Facebook and LinkedIN, if you look at it in the right way, you see it’s actually going to be a brilliant move.
Some history, Microsoft’s FUSE Labs created this project to “let you use search to express and share ideas through beautiful story collages.”. They explain:

• So.cl is for anyone who has something to say – richly, simply, elegantly.
• So.cl helps you create rich stories (posts) by making it easy to assemble and share collages of web content
• So.cl helps you discover people with like interests, and discover interests shared by people you like

The site launched back in May and is still waiting to pick up steam. But when it comes down to it, So.Cl is the more important of the social media sites.
The aim of So.Cl is to share information to essentially connect the world through the internet. We’ve all seen how the Internet, in particular social media, has sped up and increased the reach of information. By leveraging data from searches, they can connect like-minded people faster, spurring new ways of connecting through shared interests.

But it goes beyond this. By expanding it to the realm of things like science, we can connect experts in all kinds of fields and accelerate the speed of innovation. This means that through these new types of connections we can share research and information in ways we never have before and collaborate on projects with more distributed groups.

I sincerely hope these types of projects get traction. Just think of the possibilities such as the eradication of diseases because scientists are able to share their work with others researching the same things. It’s win-win.