Perhaps, but you have to admit that it's a bit convenient to wrap oneself in the shroud of "research experiment" when launching a public-facing service or appli

Perhaps, but you have to admit that it's a bit convenient to wrap oneself in the shroud of "research experiment" when launching a public-facing service or application. If the service takes off, MS can drop the "experiment" description. If it falls flat, they can rally behind it and claim plausible deniability over the fact that so.cl was ever truly in the social networking arms race. It may indeed be an experiment, or at least have begun in the lab. But consider that it's got the consumer-facing web presence of a full product/service rollout. There are plenty of ways to get a true experiment, or learning tool, widely disseminated without making it appear to be a full-fledged product launch. At our most charitable, we could probably describe the insistence on the experimental nature of so.cl as bet hedging. [I say all this as just about the last person who wants to hop onto an anti-MS bandwagon. I bear no ill will toward Microsoft in general, or so.cl specifically. In fact, I wish them both the best of luck in this endeavor. I think the world could use more options in social networking.]