The Buzz Bin

When you belong to different social networks, it can be hard to keep track of who in your network is saying what. There is a lot of background noise and static that you just don’t need.

Socialthing! is a first-of-its kind Digital Life Manager that makes it easy to see what’s going on in all of your networks at once, keep a consolidated friend list and post content to multiple sites at once. It was created to help ease the noise and focus on what you really care about. I was able to secure some private Beta invites (DM me on Twitter if you would like one) and check it out.

How It Works

Signing up for Socialthing! is easy, and after a quick confirmation, it takes you to a page where you can fill in your information (securely) to whatever social network you choose. You can pick which ones to integrate. I chose Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr so I could see when friends post status updates, links, and new pictures.

After registering for what social networks you want to include, your Lifestream is generated. User updates are shown as they happen, no matter what network they come from. You can also click directly to links, profiles, and reply to updates within the Lifestream (it will open in another tab/window). You can easily click a button to refresh your friends’ updates, and direct messages on Twitter show up in a different color to easily identify them. Multiple updates from one person are grouped together.

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The Future

Since it is in Beta, you can easily share your thoughts and suggestions for improvement. They also have a cool option where you can vote for what functionality they will add to the site. The list can be sorted from A-Z or through number of votes. From picture and video websites to bookmarking to blogs, it has it all. And if you don’t see the service you use, you can request it.

The top votes are for:

• RSS
• LinkedIn
• Google Reader
• Wordpress
• Tumblr
• FriendFeed
• Blogger
• Google Calendar
• Amazon
• StumbleUpon
• Picasa Web Albums

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For updates on Socialthing!, check out their blog or friend Socialthing! on Twitter.

General Overview of Socialthing!

Description: Socialthing! creates a “lifestream” of updates for all of your social networking profiles. Currently it supports Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Pownce, LiveJournal and Vimeo. They are still working on del.icio.us, Digg, Last.FM, MySpace and YouTube; among others to be designated by popular vote.

Usefulness: Overall, this is a good service that allows you to see all of your friends’ updates in one place. This alleviates the hassle of switching back and forth between websites and logging in and out. It makes it easier to manage the “stream” of conversation happening within different social networks.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 2 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: This tool has potential. It’s cool that you can see everything in one place. The option to post your status at once to Pownce, Twitter and Facebook is cool (although using the Twitter application in Facebook offers the same service). It has a clean, user-friendly interface and offers lots of room for feedback and growth.

Negative: When you get to having 500+ friends, it may offer a more streamlined service, but not necessarily cut down on the noise. Some say it’s also quite similar to the popular FriendFeed and other aggregators.

Conclusion

I will have to check out Socialthing! again when it’s out of beta, to compare features and functionality.

For more reviews on Socialthing! and similar applications, check out: Website Magazine, ReadWriteWeb, Lifestream, TechCrunch, ThePete.com, DownloadSquad, Publishing 2.0, WidgetsLab, Propeller, Process of Change and Lifeblog.