Social Networking has been around for a very long time and I’d argue that E-Mail is the original form of it and it’s all improved since then. The latest and greatest social networks allow communication across different mediums and Facebook has opened up their service with Facbook Connect so I can comment to blogs using my Facebook login and the comment is placed on my wall.
Social Networking has become very powerful but there are too many of them. Granted, I only actively participate in 5 networks, it’s still too many and this is what originally turned me on to Yoono. It was May of 2008 and Yoono had just launched. I heard about them via a popular Tech Blog and was hooked! Granted, the product wasn’t as refined as it is today, I still found myself completely in love with the concept and I even switched from Safari to FireFox for the privilege of using the add-on.
When I tell people about aggregation of social networks and even if I don’t say the word, I see a cringe come over their face as their mind shuts out the concept of bring multiple networks into a single sidebar but they’re missing the point. Imagine being able to see everything your friends are up to in a single view and in 2-5 minutes you’ve scanned everything your friends have been up to in the last 2 hours.
I’m not a fan of reading Twitter posts throughout the day because it takes too much time but a sidebar that’s integrated into my web browser that’s unobtrusive, slim and can easily be hidden or expanded is a perfect solution. I login and setup my widgets like Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter & FriendFeed. Once I do that, I can view single network updates or see all 5 networks in one view and Myspace updates, Flickr photos and tweets all come in to one view and I can reply, comment and share content from one window.
This is social media aggregation and I don’t cringe when I think about it. I’m always preaching about saving time and working more efficiently and this is the tool that helps me do that. Yoono has another widget that I don’t use as much but it shows related videos, photos, web sites and products as I browse the web. When I go to Amazon.com and look up a Canon DSLR Camera, the sidebar in discovery mode shows YouTube videos of that camera, reviews and a page on the web that sells it for a little cheaper. It’s not the killer app that hooks me in but its a welcome feature that makes the web feel a little bit smaller.
I do work for Yoono but that hasn’t caused me to have a hazy vision toward how awesome the sidebar is. I do work there because I love the product and see a bright future for it and the friends widget is going to get better and better. I encourage you to give it a shot. Add your networks, scroll around, reply to some tweets and you’ll see how awesome it can be.
Couldn’t agree more with you about having multiple networks and trying to get them into one continuous feed. Yoono sounds like a possible solution and i’m going to try it out.