Are You Oversocialized?
If you are a serial online social media adopter you are probably becoming a bit overwhelmed with all the social websites where you think you oughta be. Do you get the feeling you’re spreading yourself too thin? That it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain your focus with the minute-by-minute citizen news, conversation and static of the social web happening 24/7 in different places (while you also try to live an unwired life with the fleshy avatars)? It’s like there are 50 parties going on and you want to be at all of them– kinda like those high school graduation parties. If you’re like me, you’re probably losing contact with some sites to try others that may prove more efficient for sharing information. What’s a wired mind to do.
Creating Your Personal Social Media News Feed: Here Come The Aggregators for Your Lifestream
Friendfeed is a customizable social media aggregator, where you can gather and share information from diverse social networks in one place, while allowing for niche, focused networking in rooms. You tell Friendfeed which social networks you belong to (Facebook, twitter etc), which bookmarking sites (digg, delicious, furl, etc), and other sharing sites (Youtube, flickr, etc) and Friendfeed creates your own personalized social data feed, to which others can subscribe. I like this concept (I think).
(TIP: Create a room on Friendfeed for your local market or niche/ specialty and add relevant content there. It will serve as an archive of your posts, photos, videos, etc. on that market or niche. Then add the link to your blog or website. Here’s the link to the RE.net room created by Morgan Brown. For ease of posting, use the Friendfeed bookmarklet.)
Spokeo performs a similar social media aggregation, but without the robust functionality of Friendfeed. It simply lets you track your friends over 40 social websites. Using Google mail, Spokeo will wiretap all your contacts– a sort of social media stalking tool.
The list of these “lifestream” social media portals is increasing everyday. I did a little research and found these sites.
Other Social Media Aggregation/Lifestream Sites and Tools:
ProfileLinker (link broken)
hellotxt (like Fuser. Syndicate your content to microblogging sites like twitter, jaiku, & others)
MySocial24×7 (a Firefox extension for Friendfeed.)
AlertThingy (desktop application. Like twirl)
twirl (twitter desktop application)
Flock (social web browser)
Profilactic (create your lifestream via 186 social sites?)
Xoopit (is your lifestuff in your mail? Aggregates email photos, video, files. A firefox plugin for gmail. Private beta is full. Wait on line)
Socialthing (in private beta. Sign up)
Iminta (like friendfeed, except you can strip out feeds you don’t like from your friend’s lifestreams. Sign up for invitation.)
Onaswarm (lifestreaming hub)
Whereisme (calls itself a web identity aggregator)
Oneswirl (how about an identity portal, swirling your oceans of data together?)
correlate.us (broken link)
Dipity (timeline your life)
Zupme (1 message reaches all your friends in different social networks)
The Winners: Profilactic (for number of supported sites) and Friendfeed (for # of influencers and buzz)
Which social network aggregators and tools do you like/use?
Sources: Google; Special thanks to Fabric of Folly for a lot of the under-the-radar sites (jump over there for more detailed coverage).
Technorati Tags: social media, social netoworking, social media aggregators, technology, spokeo, mylifebrand, hellotxt, friendfeed, fuser, dipity
