So how many social networks are there? I mean, I spend so much time on them that my facebook status should read "Tommy is updating his status on every freaking social network for the next 45 minutes or so".
Well, a few smart people have recognized the problem and are working to solve it. I've tried out Ping.fm and Tarpipe.net and not sure which I like better. Here's my quick review of each:
Ping.fm seems to have simplicity in mind but lacks some of the control that tarpipe has. That being said, it gets the job done for about 95% of the things I want to occur. With a single email or IM, Ping.fm updates my facebook, linkedin, mysapce, twitter, friendfeed, yada yada statuses and will even upload a photo attachment to flickr and provide a short URL to it in every status update. Neat trick. So why is not the cream in my coffee? Well, I'd like for the status to read something like:
"Tommy is on the moon! http://www.flickr.com/photos/dodoskdo/tommysmoonphoto"
But currently it reads:
"Tommy http://ping.fm/lskjeE is on the moon"
Blech! A minor fix I'm sure, but I know they need to drive traffic somehow and decided this would be a good way to go about it.
Now for Tarpipe.net...this looks intriguing for the total geek user (which I count myself to be), but I'm guessing that 99% of the users will totally give up at first glance. So, I think that tarpipe needs to have templates for the 95% cases:
Post this photo to flickr, facebook, myspace, yada yada
Update my status on facebook, linkedin, etc
Post this photo flickr then update my status on facebook, linkedin, etc with a link to in and a little comment
This will provide users with a nice starting point to make their own tarpipe workflows and get people up and running very quickly. Also, having featured or new workflows that everyone could share would be neat too. Another thing I found annoying about tarpipe is that it lacks connectivity to facebook, linkedin, myspace, and a couple of other biggies in the field. I'm sure this is just a momentary oversight and hope they'll connect the big guns of the social networking world soon.
Overall though I'd say that between the two, I'm likely to keep using both for now. Ping.fm will be used for status updates while tarpipe, I'll use to post photos to flickr and have my facebook-flickr connector update my profile with new photo updates
