Enrique Gutierrez

There seem to be more aggregating sites than social sites these days, LifeStream.fm, Tabber, FriendFeed, MyBlogLog, SocialThing… nice, aye? I have an account at every site I review on Sociosophy, and I can’t review something without at least giving it a whirl… hence all of these accounts on multiple sites that do pretty much the same thing.

I’ve found that I do prefer FriendFeed to track what I follow, and have been using AlertThingy for a few days to stay on top of stuff, and love it. But usage versus display? FriendFeed isn’t all that attractive look at, and though it promotes interaction via “Likes” and “Comments”, it’s not the source of the post, and to me… is a launching pad to get to the real data. I would much rather have comments/interaction to occur on the blogs and social sites that sourced the data, rather than in my aggregated stream.

Anyhow, I’m on Twitter, del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed (aggregator), Jaiku (micro-blog aggregator), MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Pownce, Technorati, YouTube - which received my live stream from Qik… which notifies Pownce and Twitter that I’m streaming o_O, and Upcoming… oh and I have a Tumblog, which is fed into FriendFeed, MyBlogLog, and right up there in the upper right.

The funny thing about all this is - I only update my blogs (like this one) and Twitter directly from the site. Digg and del.icio.us are only interfaced from sites I go to. StumbleUpon and Tumblr are only interfaced with from the Firefox plug-ins I have for them, so input is pretty simple, and the output is available via a number of mediums, depending on reader preference - which is allowing to reach and interact with the reader-base without being annoying - I think.

Sometimes I venture to HelloTxt when I want to be “spammy” with something, but at the end of the day - … regardless of how many networks I’m a part of, unless you’re a part of those same networks and being a spam canon yourself, I’m not really spamming… I’m just having stuff show up where I’ve been… Strangely enough, thanks to Sociosophy, I’ve been to about 95 sites so far, and have accounts on all of them. (Google “nrek” you’ll see the ones I touch the most, I think). The trick is to not have the perpetual RSS updates encircle one another. This can be tricky, considering aggregate sites, and some social applications allow cross posting, which could easily be used to trigger triggers of triggers. If that’s the case, than you’re just being a noisy douche that will end up being silenced regardless.

Point being: Aggregating sites are handy for features like the two pages I’ve recently added/updated; and keep me paying attention to all the neat shit I love about the social arena. Some applications are handy for adding things to multiple places at once, but that’s only good if you’re not cross-referencing those feeds and you’re not doing it for EVERYTHING you post. Finally - actually paying attention to stuff you’re a part of is important! Unless you’re running a blog that signs up for everything you review… in which case, you’ll end up like me - everywhere, and actively ignoring sites.

Funny thing is - this post was actually started to mention - “Hey, I just updated blog with awesome! New Tumblr and LifeStream pages added for your pleasure”… then it turned into this. Whee!!!

*Image from: http://datamining.typepad.com/gallery/blog-map-gallery.html

Ok… we, meaning me in this case, have a problem. I’m not really into jumping on the buzz and getting a scoop on a “story”, for me? That’s short-lived love for writing, yuck, but what’s going on today with the battle of the AIR apps is a little… well, crap.

I commented yesterday that via an imaginary friend on FriendFeed I was following my “with others” feed on Twitter within AlertThingy. I ended up deciding I didn’t really much like that, so I killed my imaginary friend “Others”… he died quickly and painlessly. Now I’m here with version 1.2 of AlertThingy that allows me to Tweet from it… Ok, this is handy, cause I can just use Twitter as I always have: receive notifications I track on my phone, tweet when I find something useful or random to share, and reply to others when I’m replied to - this method keeps Twitter from being constantly paid attention to, and keeps my day going smooth as butter.

Twhirl… “We’re now compatible with FriendFeed” in version 0.7.9 - I think… Awesome. Now when I want to crack out on Twitter I can close AlertThingy, crack open Twhirl, and have both in one window just going awesome! o_O Not the case? Two windows… I hate making assumptions about things before using them.

Anyway, I can see the awesome in having two windows (one for Twitter, one for FriendFeed) in Twhirl, as an option maybe… but otherwise, it’s the same as having AlertThingy open… Now I have to have them all open to examine which one I think is going to be more intuitive for me to simply “use” without thinking about it, a funny paradox in and of itself. Sucks.

Both apps have good points and bad. Twhirl wasn’t made for FriendFeed, and it sort of shows: requiring users to select search to search, the lookup feature is … well, unnecessary, really, and I can’t Tweet from this window, so I need to open the other if I want to share something, which would release the Twitter bug while I’m trying a minor distraction for myself for a few seconds via a Twitter post. (That sells me on AlertThingy)

AlertThingy on the other hand only shows me tweets from people on my FriendFeed, rightfully so. Yes, I could resurrect “Others” from the dead, but then I’m just reading tweets all day in AlertThingy… bastards! So here’s what I get to do now, I guess, keep’m both - f**k it.