Early adopters and the Web 2.0 savvy have fully embraced their RSS feeds through their Google Reader, Bloglines or other services. Yet, RSS is not as widespread and mainstream as it potentially could and should be. ensembli, a ‘smart’ RSS tool, takes a different approach than some of the prominent RSS feeds with the goal of enhancing the everyday citizens’ online experience.

ensembli indexes RSS feeds and filters them through “relevance engine” based on a peer review, multi-agent software system (MAS). ensembli’s real power is in understanding what type of content individual users are interested in. Similar to how Pandora provides a relevant stream of music based on preferences, the more someone uses ensembli — reading, discarding and ignoring content – the more relevant the content ensembli delivers.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 4 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive:

ensembli provides more relevant, useful and current social content than other standard browsers. It is also beneficial in that it delivers top content from across the web, rather than the finite number of blogs in an RSS reader. Additionally, a problem with RSS feeds is the amount of content that builds up over time. ensembli eliminates this by providing only top relevant content on a particular interest/search terms. Another wonderful feature is that as your interests change – say from the presidential election to a new found focus on environmental issues – ensembli will quickly adapt with you. Ensembli also has useful built in features such as the ability to tweet stories, and – like standard RSS feeds – the ability to read stories directly on ensembli, or click-though to the original post. Stories are also organized based on interest and prioritized by personal relevance.

Negative:

Many bloggers share thoughts about a broad variety of topics. For example, a sports blog will not focus only on soccer, but will also cover baseball, hockey, etc. As a result, RSS readers often receive stories that individuals would find interesting, but would likely not search for directly. This ability to receive trusted information from divers sources is one of the great benefits of RSS feeds, and, because searches are based on predetermined topics, is something that ensembli is unable to provide.

Conclusion:

Many people are unable to give their RSS feeds the attention they’d like to during the workweek. Moreover, many people are not familiar with the benefits or feel intimidated by RSS feeds. ensembli is great for current, relevant information for those short on time, or for those less Web 2.0 savvy. This service, in combination with a traditional RSS feed for blogs deserving consistent reads, offers a great way to stay informed on the latest news.

Ping.fm is a straightforward service, allowing users to post to multiple social networks from a single dashboard. The service provides users with multiple ways to post updates and URLs, and advanced customization that allows users to pinpoint exactly which social network a message is delivered.

This service supports over 30 social networking sites including Flickr, Twitter, Plurk, Linkedin, FriendFeed, WordPress, Diigo and Facebook. Users can update their social networking profiles using mobile phones, SMS, MMS, Instant Messaging, email, and third party applications such as iGoogle, Facebook and Twhirl with one submission.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 2 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: The Ping.fm’s user experience and functionality is great, and the ability to update from virtually any device to any social network makes pinging your friends mobile and fast. Additionally, Ping.fm stays up to date with the latest social platforms, allowing users to grow their social presence across multiple social networks quickly. The customization options are also useful, as often times different social networks are associated with different audiences. For example, a person’s Yammer and Facebook networks will likely receive quite different messaging.

Negative: In order to act as a single social posting hub across multiple platforms, Ping.fm removes users from the social network, thus, making the experience less social. Unlike TV, the power of social media is in its ability to create a two way conversation. To engage in conversation, share ideas, and have a dialogue, not blanket the web with one directional status updates. Ping.fm is not a strong listening social platform.

Conclusion: Given the importance people and organizations place on having a broad social presence – and the time it takes to keep these multiple social networks alive and rich with updated information – Ping.fm’s service is occasionally valuable. However, engagement in conversations is vital, and therefore Ping.fm may be limited to those instances when social media can become a one directional plateform: For example, upon return from a trip and posting photos, or during busy periods when time does not permit full dialogue but providing status update are important.

Diigo, where information, knowledge and community come together, is essentially two services in one. Its primary function is being a social bookmarking service. However, because people are relatively definable by what they read and bookmark, Diigo also integrated a social networking platform that allows users to find and interact with others with similar interests.

As a social bookmarking service it offers many features that other popular bookmarking services provide, such as easy tagging from the toolbar, recommended tags, and search capabilities. But Diigo goes further, allowing users to highlight and comment directly on web pages, and it allows users to organize tagged features into an interactive list. This list is then played as a slideshow with one mouse click.

Diigo makes social bookmarking truly Web 2.0 with social search and networking based on an individual’s tags, bookmarks and annotations. Diigo will also recommend bookmarks and other Diigo users that share similar interests. Additionally, users can see what content their friends have bookmarked and commented on, and Diigo even pulls out the bookmarks and groups for which you share a common interest.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: The interactive slideshow is a useful feature. It allows retrieving and sharing online research, including highlights and annotations, effortlessly. After importing tags from other bookmarking sites, or starting from scratch, users can easily send and share messages and content, join groups of interest, meet and collaborate with others, participate in forums, and view current hot topics. All this – along with Diigo’s advanced search capabilities – makes finding, discussing and sharing online content a breeze. Additionally, keep your eye out for the version of Diggo, which should be hitting the Web in the next couple of weeks.

A few of the features to look for include: A major UI change, more intuitive design, improved search and cache feature, the ability to upload screenshots for your bookmarks, and improved user interaction.

Negative: Del.icio.us generally is the first social bookmarker people think of. As a result, Delicious organizes more tags and information. For example, a Del.icio.us search for soccer generates 65,660 bookmarks, and the same search on Diigo generates 706 results. Additionally, Diigo, though it recommends similar tags, does not intuitively include them in a search. For example, a search for soccer does not intuitively include futbol unless a post is tagged both soccer and futbol.

Conclusion: When it comes to bookmarking, Diigo clearly offers a number of useful features not found on other bookmarking services. And having the additional social aspect provides users with a great user experience and improves search. All this makes transferring your bookmarks to Diigo a smart idea. However, because much of the power of a social bookmarking site is in how much data has been bookmarked and organized, until more people convert to Diigo, it will not be the most useful bookmarking search tool available.

There are a lot of great Twitter applications available, but Twitter in your inbox? TwitterGadget makes it easy to monitor your favorite Twitter users and personal messaging from your iGoogle homepage, Gmail account, or directly in your browser. Created by LOGIKA Corporation, this Web 2.0 tool allows you to post status updates and conduct searches without opening additional tabs. View your complete stream or only select individuals, send @ replies, and direct messages (DM), but there are several additional features that make TwitterGadget extremely powerful.

TwitterGadget offers a built-in search that allows users to search by keyword or hashtags,  profile statistics of individuals in your stream, and keyboard shortcuts.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 4 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: Beyond providing your basic history, TwitterGadget provides symbols and emoticons that can be added to tweets. Accidentally tweet a typo or a broken link? You can go back and delete it! Other great features include the advanced settings, which lets you personalize color and sound options. TwitterGrader also allows you to hover over shortened URLs to reveal the full URL. And, the quick retweet feature and built-in URL shortening service makes spreading content a breeze. Most importantly, the keyboard shortcuts are incredible time savers.

On a user experience level, the AJAX based TwitterGadget operates extremely smoothly. And TwitterGadget is easily installed, takes no software, and requires creating no new passwords.

Negative: After adjusting the settings, Twitter streams are automatically updated every three minutes, or they can be updated manually. Not having real-time updates can make having a fluent conversation difficult.

Conclusion: Using TwitterGadget is seamless, provides a significant level of personalization, saves times, and improves user experience. Users can tweet in a cleaner environment with built-in search. Once TwitterGadget becomes real-time it may be the best Twitter application available, if it’s not already!

Would it benefit you or your company to have a social network? KickApps, one of the most powerful social networking platforms available, makes it easy to create and manage a robust, fully customizable social network on your website.

KickApps is a white label self service platform that runs on its own servers. Going beyond the social networking basics of allowing customizable profiles, friending, video and photo sharing, chat, and message boards, KickApps also allows users to upload their own content, interact on blogs, and use a programmable video player. Additionally, its powerful widget builder simplifies syndicating content. It also has applications that can interact with a content management system.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 4 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: The service is open and free for anyone to set up with no advanced system requirements. Additionally, the KickApps Site Styler makes creating and monitoring social content extremely easy for anyone, even those new to development. For those accustomed to working on the back end, the KickApps Affiliate Center (AC), a web based management and reporting tool, provides advanced features. Designers are able to use DNS masking, HTML, CSS, Java, and the KickApps APIs to develop social networks that integrate seamlessly with existing sites. Additionally, the KickApps App Studio allows anyone to easily develop widgets, directing outside users to the personalized community.

From a user’s standpoint, creating a personalized account and navigating the many features is fast and simple.

Negative: KickApps does run non-offensive advertisements on its hosted social networks. There is an option that allows users to pay to remove these advertisements. The cost of this service is based on the popularity of your social network. Another drawback is that DNS masking is not as seamless as if the social network was hosted directly on your website’s server.

Conclusion: The importance of user generated content is escalating, and stakeholders are expecting to have a social web experience. KickApps provides an excellent, easy to use and cost effective way of creating an integrated social network on your website.

User-generated content and conversation is the driving force behind the evolution of Web 2.0. Keeping up on what’s being said and by who is a demanding, important task. Enter Samepoint.com.

This tool seeks out the continuous stream of online discussions, converting them into permanent web pages. SamePoint then aggregates these conversations in a single location. It also provides a tag cloud for each article, and offers searches for all social mentions or particular categories.

“We feel the breath and depth of sources we’re mining, combined with the ability to parse results by social media type, [and] our unique search result features are helping to make us the number one site for online reputation management searches,” says Richard Krueger, Chief Conversations Officer.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 2 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: Frequently, standard search engines do not find user-generated conversations, as they are dynamic and constantly evolving. Samepoint provides a useful way to follow the conversation in a centralized location, and makes it easier to know what’s being said, track top influencers, and participate. Additionally, the real-time search results and the Q&A section keep you on top of the conversation. Also useful, the positive/negative words mention provides a basic level of a conversation’s sentiment, and each article’s large tag cloud saves time by providing users with an overview of the article’s topic before reading it in full.

Negative: Samepoint is still in beta form. It does not search all social sites and does not pickup all conversations in the sites it does search. Therefore, results are not comprehensive. Additionally, other monitoring sites evaluate relative social performance, and real-time analytics on searches, a useful feature not found on Samepoint.

Conclusion: Given the growing demand for tracking online conversations and reducing spam, the competition among social search engines is growing. Socialpoint is user friendly and beneficial; as it refines its searches it will become an even more valuable Web 2.0 tool.

Tracking conversations is a big part of using social media. Lots of online tools help with monitoring, but very few have the capability to search across all social media tools. Enter Social Mention.

Social Mention is a “real time search engine.” This tool searches through user-generated content across different types of social media such as blogs, microblogging services, comments, news, events, videos and bookmarks.

Social Mention also provides more than search results: A social rank score, based on popularity, is given to each search. The rank includes the time of the last mention of the search term as well as how often the search term is mentioned (i.e. Obama was mentioned every 26 minutes). The amount of online content generated from different sources is also populated and shared. Users can also search the RSS Feed and compile all search results in a CSV/Excel spreadsheet. A tag cloud of related terms is also included.

Popular social media sources Social Mention aggregates results from includes:

• Google blog search
• Twitter
• Delicious
• FriendFeed
• Flickr
• Digg
• YouTube

Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: Individuals and especially organizations can monitor their online presence using Social Mention. The amount of information this search engine provides – across different sources – is very valuable. The search engine is very organized and easy to use. Additionally, Social Mentions helps organizations engage with their stakeholders.

Negative: Similar to all other search engines, Social Mention might not catch everything. If an organization wanted a comprehensive view of their online presence, a secondary check in other search engines or tools is necessary.

Conclusion: Social Mention is great to use for quick searches. In a recent study by Nielson Media, more marketers are planning to increase spending in social media this year. Social Mention will definitely help organizations learn if they’re leveraging social media to their advantage.

Badges are often used to promote events or show affiliations to group or campaigns. Everywun is a new movement that enables people to support great causes with the use of social media. It supports five different types of causes: animals, environment, education, health and poverty.

Everywun uses credits as their form of currency. Upon registration, you receive 100 credits. The more credits you earn, the more you can spend in the Everywun store. There, you can redeem those credits for the impact you want to make, i.e. planting a tree. Actions you can take to support your causes are adding a badge to your Facebook, blog or website; answering trivia questions about your favorite cause, invite friends to join the Everywun Community, participate in a volunteer event, and join the Everywun Volunteer Team as a Campus or Community Leader. For every click on your badge, a donation is made by a corporate sponsor of Everywun.

This philanthropic movement also calls businesses to take action. According to Everywun, 85% of Americans change brands to brands if they are affiliated with a nonprofit. Additionally, 70% of Everywun’s profits are donated to charity!

Buzz Meter Ranking: 4 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: This movement encourages everyone to be philanthropic - regardless of age. Both individuals and organizations can use this tool to help support causes near and dear to their hearts for free. The different types of actions make philanthropy even more fun and provides a platform for learning about the different causes.

Negative: Everywun only focuses on five types of causes and selects nonprofits based on CharityNavigator.org. If your charity is not registered on the site or has low visibility, chances are it won’t be in the Everywun Store.

Conclusion: A great movement for philanthropy. Many people feel like they have to hold back or stop supporting their causes because of the current economy. Everywun shuts any excuses for not giving and allows people a fun alternative to support causes through promotion, word-of-mouth and volunteering. Everywun uses social media for social good and I encourage you to do the same.

“When new Tweets, photos, videos and posts come in from the feedosphere, they’re like fragments of a person’s online presence. PeopleBrowsr assembles the parts into a whole, connecting the dots and building a complete picture.” - PeopleBrowsr

PeopleBrowsr is another Twitter client that allows you to view your Tweets in a “simple visual dashboard.” PeopleBrowsr is a browser-based solution, rather than an Adobe Air application, so users can access their account on any computer with the Internet. PeopleBrowsr is built on open source modules.

Through PeopleBrowsr, you can search interesting topics, find and follow old and new friends, create cross-network groups, and write ‘PeopleProfiles,’ which is like a PeopleWiki. PeopleBrowsr provides three panes on the dashboard: one for your conversation stream, another for your gallery and the last one for a map (you can change these panes to show videos, pictures, people you follow, your followers on Twitter and even specific search items). It also offers search filters, a way to categorize groups (and set them to public or private) of friends with ‘PeopleTags’ and even #hashtag groups. You can also track people on your other social networks, i.e. Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc., as well as update your status using this client. All profile data from these accounts are incorporated, too. Users only need their Twitter or Facebook account login information to use this client.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: PeopleBrowsr offers an array of features, which their competition can’t ignore. It is also much easier and fun to use than other clients. A great way to manage all of your social networks, especially Twitter, on one dashboard. The best aspect about PeopleBrowsr is the ability to use it on any computer – unlike other apps that run using Adobe Air.

Negative: PeopleBrowsr is not compatible with all web browsers. Currently this tool runs on “a broadband connection, FireFox 3.0.5/ Safari 3.2.1 or higher and a Pentium IV or Mac. It works best in Safari 3.2.1.” Sorry IE users!

Conclusion: I predict this PeopleBrowsr to become one of the most widely used Twitter clients! It’s easy to use and the features will surely grab the attention of avid social networkers.

Lizzer – pronounced like lizard but without the “D”– is a bookmarklet created by Digital Sciences, LLC. The tool searches for blog posts, online documents, pictures and videos without leaving your blog editor or your email service site.

Lizzer offers seven services from an assortment of multimedia:

• the Web – Delicious, Delicious Account, Google Web or Yahoo Web searches
• Documents – Docstoc, Docstoc Account
• Image – Flickr (CC), Flickr Accounts, Google Image Search, Yahoo Search
• Blog – Google Blog Search
• News – Google News Search
• Video – Google Video Search, YouTube, YouTube Account

You can use these services to search for links to add to your email or blog. Simply enter your inquiry in the search field and Lizzer will do the rest. It provides snapshot images of pictures and videos. And for other searches, the ability to link the selected result’s URL to a word or phrase, insert the URL, video or picture directly into the blog or email, or preview the selected search result.

The bookmarklet works with the following email and blog platforms: WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, tumblr., Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and AOL Mail. Lizzer is compatible with Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 7.

Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: Lizzer is a great tool for anyone to use, especially people dipping their toes into blogging. The bookmarklet provides results from an array of multimedia searches all at one click of the button. Lizzer is easy to use and install.

Negative: If you exit out of the current webpage you reviewing, the bookmarklet automatically closes. Of course you can go back and start the bookmarklet again, but it would be nice if you could decide when to close Lizzer. Another negative aspect to Lizzer was the amount of search terms. I searched a fairly popular YouTube video and only received about 4 to 5 Google search results in Lizzer.

Conclusion: Lizzer really is “linking made easy.” You should definitely test and see if this makes your blogging or email writing effortless.