I’m constantly surprised and impressed by how many great little add-ons and clients there are out there to help social network interaction. Three of the best are the StumbleUpon toolbar, desktop tweeting with twhirl and now the catchall FriendFeed desktop client, the charmingly named Alert Thingy.
Why the StumbleUpon toolbar is genius
Unlike most site submission/sharing sites like Digg, Mixx and others, using StumbleUpon basically requires the installation of their toolbar. When I first came across StumbleUpon this was actually a slight negative – I don’t like sites that require me to install add-ons to work properly.
Now I wouldn’t do without it. The genius of the StumbleUpon toolbar is that it makes you want to use the service, it makes you an addict. There’s always time to stumble a few more sites and give them a quick thumbs up or thumbs down. It makes site submission a breeze and lets you quickly check reviews and add your own comments to any stumbled site. Basically it makes you addicted to improving the resource constantly, which is only to the advantage of you, other users, and StumbleUpon. I think it must be the single biggest factor in StumbleUpon’s success.
The only current limitation is that the toolbar is only available for Firefox and Internet Explorer. That leaves other browser users out in the cold, and that’s particularly an issue with Safari which figures suggest is gaining a toehold in the Windows market now as well as with OSX run Macs. Sure there’s a workaround, but the standard user wants to be able to install the toolbar easily in their browser of choice.
Why twhirl is best at making you twitter
Twitter is the “buzz” social networking portal at the moment, and far more useful and valuable than it initially seems. But the trick to Twitter is that you have to stay reasonably active, keep yourself involved in conversations, otherwise it’s really just spouting random chatter at you all the time.
Obviously continually checking your twitter page in your browser isn’t the most practical way staying involved in a number of conversations at once. Firefox offers a number of add-ons that work within the browser – like Twitterbar. But let’s face it, even the most ardent web junkie is not concentrating on their browser window 100% of the time.
Enter twhirl, which takes advantage of Adobe Air to bring Twitter functionality to a desktop client. It’s all very simple really, once twhirl is installed (and one of the joys of Adobe Air is that it makes its applications installable cross-browser) you simply tell it your Twitter username and password and it lets you listen and tweet within a self contained application. twhirl also lets you cross post to the similar apps Pownce and Jaiku.
For me this makes Twitter more like a large scale instant messaging service, and seperating it from the browser makes it much more accessible and useful. Desktop alerts of new tweets mean I can respond quickly even when working with other applications and not paying much attention to my browser window. And the setup is good enough that new tweets appear basically instantaneously, making it easy to react quickly to information.
Why Alert Thingy ensures you miss nothing
And for everything else there’s Alert Thingy. Another Adobe Air powered desktop client, it links in with FriendFeed to ensure that you’re kept fully updated with all your social networking – whether that be blog posts, submissions to news sites such as Mixx, or indeed new tweets on Twitter. Once you’re set up it gives you far more functionality than the actual FriendFeed webpage, which you’ll probably only ever visit again to add new contacts.
FriendFeed itself is a great service because it brings together your contacts from all the different social networks and posts all their updates onto a single page. But the interface is slightly clunky for my tastes and it’s more effective for less time-critical services such as submissions to Flickr.
Alert Thingy brings a much faster and more convenient way to read updates to the desktop. It acts in much the same way as twhirl in that it updates whenever new content is added to your contacts’ social networks – whether that be a submission to Digg or a new tweet. It even updates with new comments on your contacts’ blog posts (as well as your own). I never really found FriendFeed particularly useful until Alert Thingy came along, because the mish mash of different styles of social networks it brought together just didn’t work effectively as a web page that you needed to visit and/or refresh regularly.
The latest version of Alert Thing (v1.2) even adds the ability to send tweets as well. This is great new functionality and really widens the scope of the application. That being said, I don’t think it trumps twhirl on that score yet. Updates to Alert Thingy are slightly slower than with twhirl, approximately a five minute delay. This is not a major issue, but for social networkers who might be keen to be the first commenter on a new blog post at a major source like Mashable, that delay in receiving the tweet can be important.
Alert Thingy is, of course, also reliant on your contacts being on FriendFeed as well. That’s again not a major issue with less time critical networking such as Digg or Flickr, but is important in regards to tweets which you need to keep an eye on more regularly. Hence another reason why despite the increased Twitter functionality on Alert Thingy I’ll be keeping twhirl running on my PC.
No doubt there’ll be more along soon
Those are certainly my “top three” add ons/applications that have really made a difference to my social networking recently. As I’ve said on my earlier posts about developing blog traffic growth I’m still learning about maximising social networking to increase visitors to this blog. One thing I have learnt is that if you’re adding value to your social networks then that’s the best way to get reciprocal value in terms of visitors and interests back. The three things I’ve highlighted above go a long way to helping you achieve that added value, to the greater benefit of all your networks.
So, I’ve named my top three, what are your favourites?