3 Social Networking Applications, Reviewed

1. Meeting Social Networking Applications

This is for all you social networking addicts! We reviewed 3 different applications that let you check multiple sites (like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn) from one spot. Do they make life easier?

Social networking is king. You can’t go a minute without hearing about a social network site on TV. The news channels and celebrities seem to favor Twitter, MySpace is at the cause of many divorce court shows, and Facebook is mentioned in more and more commercials. There’s even a movie, The Social Network, out in theaters staring a fictionalized version of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. See the promotional image below.

Even less computer-savvy individuals are creating social network profiles to keep in touch with family, friends, and colleagues. Facebook seems to be leading the pack, second only to Google of the most visited site in the entire World Wide Web, currently according to Alexa. You can also see Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn in the top ten.

As you may know, it’s hard to get away with using only one social network. Certain family members or friends might be loyal to only one site, pushing you to join each. So you don’t have to mix your personal and professional life, you may also have to create a LinkedIn profile to keep in touch with colleagues and to develop business connections.

Logging into, checking, and updating multiple social networking sites can be a hassle. However as we’ll discuss, there are applications that can give you access to multiple sites from one spot. These types of apps can save you time and energy, while helping to improve communication and collaboration in your personal and professional worlds.

I reviewed three of these social network applications: Outlook Social Connector, Digsby, and Yoono Desktop. To better evaluate each application, I came up with a set of criteria to base my reviews and findings on:

·         Installation and Setup

·         Supported Networks and Services

·         User Interface

·         Functionality

·         Popularity

I’ll discuss these attributes for all three applications. I give each a rating on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being bad and 5 being excellent. At the end, I give you a comparison table and help you choose which application(s) are best for you.