Microsoft is currently accepting participation requests for the Beta testing program of Vine, a new information service with social networking capabilities. The Redmond company's Vine will allow end users to build communities and to stay in touch via alerts, reports and traditional messages at all times, and using a variety of communication mediums. The service orbits around a personal dashboard that acts at the central hub, gathering information from a variety of sources from friends to news outlets. Microsoft Vine is currently tailored to the US, the software giant informed. The service is scheduled to debut into Beta at the start of May 2009, with a limited number of participants being allowed to join.

“Use the dashboard to stay informed about what’s happening with the places and people you care about. Information associated with the places you have chosen will appear on your map, including articles culled from 20,000 local and national news sources as well as public safety announcements from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Information associated with the people you care about who are in your Vine network will appear on the dashboard too. You will know when they send you an alert, post a report or update their Facebook status information,” Microsoft revealed.

Vine will allow contacts to be organized into groups so that alerts can go out and reach multiple people at once. Reports can be shared across dashboards, with the end users controlling who actually gets to see the info. According to the Redmond company, the service, deemed societal networking, is aimed to embrace existing social networkings such as Twitter and Facebook, and it will be available for free spanning across not only desktop PCs, but also email services, mobile phones, and additional devices. Microsoft also plans to introduce a premium version of the service which will be made available for a fee.

“Over time, the network will provide advanced capabilities to help individuals, communities and organizations work together to fundamentally improve quality of life and be better prepared for any disaster. Grounded in the tools people use today, Microsoft is working to deliver a new generation of software and services that will enable society to self-organize effectively toward a broad range of goals. We call this concept “societal networking”,” the company added.