Managing my virtual life

I’m sure I’ve mentioned my addiction to social networks before - I’m signed up to dozens of them and am even active on a few - but keeping track of them all takes more time in the morning than email!

And I’m clearly not the only one as the latest web2.0 tech trend seems to involve creating social media aggregators. Services that pool together what everyone is saying on every social media site you’re subscribed to.

They track comments made on your You Tube videos, tweets on your twitter stream, your Facebook news and much more. But which one is the best? There seem to be loads.

Well I’ve decided to sign up for every one I can find, log in to each one every day and make a call over which is 1) the easiest to use, 2) offers the most comprehensive feature set and 3) tracks the most social networks.

You can of course use Facebook itself to keep track of all your different feeds and Jaiku gives you the chance to add a number of them - but those sites have networks of their own.

If you want to go public with your social life - more specifically for the stuff you create a Tumblog would be a good idea - I’ve got my own at howtobeageek.net but that’s really for telling other people what I’m doing.

The point of a social aggregator like Second Brain or Socialthing is to see what your friends are doing and saying on the dozens of social networks we’re all now signed up to.

Basically they let you enter all the different networks you subscribe to along with Usernames and Passwords and in turn they connect to the API of that site and let you either watch what’s happening on all of them.


Or if you really want to - be in one place and send comments, posts, tweets and anything else you might need to - to that network from within the interface of the aggregator.


The sites all vary in what they offer and how much control you have over publishing to other sites but the general principle is pretty much the same regardless of site.

The goal is to let you manage your virtual life - you can link your Digg, Facebook, My Space, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, You Tube, Flickr and on and on… profiles into one place and manage everything from there.

To me this is ideal as, unlike other people, I really only check each site very quickly to see what my online friends are saying about me, saying about each other, saying what’s happening in the world and generally communicating en mass.

It means I can view my friends photos, videos and tweets from one place without opening a dozen browser tabs and spending the first three hours of every day working through them.

I’m not interested in building up my own social media credentials, I don’t need to have ten thousand Facebook friends or 100,000 Twitter followers - I’m happy with two on each but as long as I’ve got two on each I’d like to be able to follow them properly.

I’ll go into more detail about each one when I’ve had a real chance to use them - yes it means for now I’ll still be opening seven browser tabs but eventually one will win out - well hopefully!

So what am I starting with: Socialthing, Second Brain, Spokeo, FriendFeed, Iminta, Ping.fm and Plaxo.

Of course being able to review each of the above relies on being accepted into beta programmes - so far I’ve been accepted to socialthing and second brain - I’m applying for the others right now.

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