Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Status Here, Status There, Status Everywhere

MySpace just recently announced that they have a new app to update Twitter when you update your Myspace status. I think I heard that AIM is also jumping into the status bandwagon. I'm sure Yahoo is not far behind.

Of course, Facebook has had an app to Twitter for a while.

With all these apps running around that will update your status on all the social networks (yes, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and many others are now called social networks), the ordinary person can go nuts trying to figure out who updates who. Or else, you will see double, triple updates of the same status in one network. I've seen this happen on Twitter and on Facebook.

If you have a Facebook and MySpace and Twitter account (*raises hand* I do) and you activate the app on Facebook and MySpace -- remember Facebook and MySpace do not talk to each other (sacrilege, they are real competitors) -- and you put the same status update on Facebook and MySpace, Twitter will get the same status update twice. Because... Facebook sent it to Twitter. MySpace sent it to Twitter.

You really need to understand the direction of these apps.

Unless... You find an app that will update all your social network sites in one fell swoop. Is there such an appimal out there? There sure is.

I use Hellotxt.com. I understand ping.fm does it, too. You will need to trust these sites with your userid and password into your social networks. Yes, you do. If you use the MySpace connect to Twitter, you will need to give MySpace your Twitter information. Same is true for Facebook. How else do you expect the API to talk for you?

What I like about Hellotxt is that I can type in my status and decide which social network I want to update -- all of them, just two or only one of them. Hellotxt also gives me some visibility to my Twitter activity and I can use it to respond to my Twitter friends. I just discover another reason I like Hellotxt. I just tried to connect to ping.fm and VPN blocks it.

As majority of my day is in VPN (yes, another acronymn. Virtual Private Network. I have to log into this for my job.) hell, all my social network access is banned. Google Reader gives me visibility to Facebook and some Twitter statuses. I don't care about MySpace.

If you have multiple social network accounts and each of them offer apps, you might want to seriously think of finding a service that will handle bulk updates for you. This also saves you time if you want to post the same status to more than one social network.

Mashable.com has a great article about how Facebook statuses can be updated without being in Facebook -- HOW TO: Update Facebook from Outside. The article briefly touches on services like HelloTxt and ping.fm.

How many social networks do you belong to? If you belong to multiple ones, how do you update the status if there is one?

2 comments:

  1. I have my website set up to send Twitter a message when I have an update. Twitter in turn sends a message or rather says 'hello' to Facebook which in turn updates my status there. It's like a never ending loop of "Hey! I have something really unimportant to tell th world in 140 words or less!" Incidentally, I get an E-mail from my website if someone makes a comment on a blog which you don't have listed in 'your readings' :( :( <-- double frownies!

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  2. Mr. Jack, you are now on MY READINGS list.

    All comments to my blog must be approved by me. So, I get an email when this needs to be done.

    I use another service that checks my blog for new entries. When it finds one, it posts it to HelloTxt which in turn will post it to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. How twisted is this :) The service is called Twitterfeed.com

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