Tulalip, Microsoft’s social network: what is it?

A name has been circulating online for a few hours: Tulalip. What is it? Perhaps it’s Microsoft’s new social network. The uncertainty stems from the fact that the only evidence supporting this hypothesis is an image, perhaps leaked from within Redmond or perhaps deliberately allowed to leak.
Tulalip appears to be a cross between Facebook and Twitter and, certainly, would be the new competitor to the already fiercely contested Google+.
It’s strange that the image of the Tulalips homepage might have mistakenly originated from a Microsoft PC: it’s much more likely that a well-conceived strategy is actually behind this move.
On Socl.com, the site where the image briefly appeared, we can now read a message that in Italian reads: “Thank you for stopping by, Socl.com is an internal design project from a Microsoft Research team that was mistakenly published on the web. Frankly, it had no meaning“.
Maybe… Nevertheless, the curiosity effect was triggered in no time, and hypotheses are already being made: is it the right time to launch this platform, or is it perhaps too late for yet another social network?
One fact is undoubtedly worth considering: Microsoft, with Bing, has already managed to enter Facebook some time ago, becoming the search engine of reference within the father of all social networks.
A result not to be underestimated by any means.
And what if Tulalip could unite all the major social networks (Facebook and Twitter), funneling them into a single “container” that, thus compact, could overshadow the recently launched Google+? Another hypothesis to consider.
Too many ‘what ifs’, too many hypotheses, only one solution: wait for the right time to understand if Tulalip will really launch or if it was truly just a Microsoft mistake or prank.