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If you’re playing the social field online, chances are you covet the tools which lighten the load of information consumption as well as those that simplify your networking efforts. With micro-blogging all-the-rage these days, streamlining your updates (*see likes, dislikes, grunts, disgruntles, links, news-bites, vids, pics, latest lunch habits, nap time et al) has never been more necessary. Who cares?! We care of course, and by we, I refer to the collective (We)b. The collective (We)b that we immerse ourselves in everyday wants to share their lives with us and ostensibly, we want to share our lives with them.
My two favorite mico-blogs du jour are Twitter and Plurk; they both have thriving and lively communities and create an opportunity to uniquely connect and network with other online pals. If you are a Twitter fanatic or a member of the Plurkistan Party, I’ve found two fabulous networking tools designed to support both addictions.
Twhirl is a desktop Twitter client that’s been around for awhile, but I just fired it up today and I’m not ashamed to admit, “I’ve been lost without it.” It connects to multiple Twitter and Friendfeed accounts, pops up notifications on new tweets, shortens long URLs, cross-posts updates to Pownce and Jaiku, post images to TwitPic, searches tweets using TweetScan and filters timelines. Version .08.002 now hides old tweets and direct messages, and adds support for Friendfeed Rooms and system status notifications, in addition to some back-end fixes. If all that was blah-blah-blah, suffice to say it looks way groovy on my desktop and makes it super easy to view incoming tweets and respond in a timely manner AND it doesn’t throw up the Twitter is over capacity whale error message so frequently found these days on the Twitter homepage.
And then there was Ping.fm! This application is a dashboard platform allowing users to post to several of the top social networking services including blogging, micro-blogging and status updates. Of the many social services it supports are: Blogger, Facebook, Jaiku, Linkedin, Myspace, Pownce, Twitter, Plurk. Streamlining my posts across several services is a tremendous time saver and I dig that. The service also shortens long URLs and I love that. My only critique of the service is the lack of interactivity with your online buddies since you are not logged into a specific site. However, you can use AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, WAP, iPhone/iPod Touch, SMS or E-mail and let Ping.fm relay your messages. For now, it seems a nice way to make a sweep of updates, freeing you to login to your favorite network and participate in the conversation, which to me is the best part!
** If you would like to sign up for the service, use the beta code “letmeping” and get in on the beta action.
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