Lean back and let the internet feed you with yummie content… Great concept, isn’t it? Just like a zoo personal feeding this little fella · photo by Raghuram

“Never compare apples and oranges”, we have been preached since we waved goodbye to kindergarten. I’m afraid that I am going to do exactly the opposite of what this old saying (en-de equivalents can be found here) implies. Now that we signed up on heaps of online services like Facebook, Google Reader, Digg, Del.icio.us, Twitter and Co, we are having troubles sharing that content with people from other platforms.

The web goes cross platform with content aggregators who suck content from specific sites and gather its content in one place resulting in one huge diverse feed. Find out about apples, oranges and aggregators after the jump.

Considering the state of our information society, we reached the point where we feel like we are missing out on something important, but have barely time to catch up. If we picked up every bit of information, our life span would have to increase to centuries. Aggregators come in at this point to help you skim through other people’s activities.

Apple and oranges. Socialthing! and Friendfeed. I know that both services pointed out that they approach the content aggregation from different perspectives. Here is a portrait of each service giving you a review. After this you should know what service fits your personal wishes and might be just made for you. One devise you should keep in mind in todays internet jungle: Know what you need. Know what you want. Whether you want apple or orange juice/pie/smoothie. 

Socialthing!

Being a invitation-only beta project, it might be unfair to compare it to the fully grown opponent Friendfeed, but yet, these two services are powerful and worth focusing on before you decide for either of it.

Socialthing! offers only a handful (6) of services like Twitter, Del.icio.us, Digg and Flickr. On the one hand it provides your friends with the things you upload onto these external services. Twitter updates directly from the Socialthing! interface are possible, so are updates on the Facebook status and Pownce for instance.

Your friend list and thus the friends’ updates you receive depend on the people you are following on the services that you initially configure. So if you follow, say, Susan Mayer on twitter, you’ll receive her tweets and if you add her on Facebook, you’ll get updates on her profile changes like galleries and status updates. There is (as it is now, June 08) no control of what people you are displaying on your web content mixture list.

If the person (say Susan Mayer) that you get updates from because you are following her on Twitter is signed up on Socialthing!, you can click on it and it takes you to the public profile (of say Susan Mayer) giving you an insight on what other services this person has set up and draws content from: Susan Mayer Vimeo videos, Susan Mayer’s Last FM songs she liked…

In short, Socialthing! doesn’t take care of your friends management. This is entirely done in the service like Facebook or Twitter. That is how it is now.

Socialthing!’s interface runs on Firefox, Safari and Co, except for Internet Explorer. Is that what makes this service so attractive for me? Can’t tell. 

To see all the Web 2.0 content created by X you need to have him added on all services. If X signed up on Socialthing! you can see what other services he/she sigend up for. I tried that with a friend who posted a picture I didn’t see on Socialthing! but on Friendfeed. After adding him on Flickr, his picture popped up on my friend stream. I wish this step could be taken by Socialthing! itself, but there is actually something just about to be released that should change this according to the Socialthing! Blog. Keep you updated on that befriending and cross-networking issue Socialthing works on. Mind you, they consider a way of letting people subscribe to a service they are not signed up for - but leaving it up to the user to define those visibility rules.

Public Profiles with a username.socialthing.com URL give insight. I wait for a RSS feed for that because that might be interesting for people who want to keep up to date with a person of their interest. Like a developer. Or just common internet stalking.

My public page that aggregates my content produced at del.icio.us, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm and Twitter can be found here: phila.socialthing.com. Again, RSS support for that would be awesome.

Again, Socialthing! is still a private beta. Invites are limited at the moment but the number of accounts rolling out should increase according to blog statements. Supporting 6 services this offers a solid base. Casual RSS feeds should be supported soon. Like my blog posts. Right now, I do that with an Wordpress Plugin (Twitter Updater) that automatically tweets every time I hit the publish button. So I don’t mind the lack of RSS support as it is now, since not everyone is using aggregators, but once it is wide spread this would mean that there were double items.

Apropos double items: A thing that Socialthing is well aware of and has been working on… De-Duplication (here Twitter and Facebook).

What I really like about Socialthing! is their dynamic and user-centric way of getting things done. 

Friendfeed

Being the tribal elder Friendfeed has a lead over its relatively young competitor on web aggregation. Checking the features and lacks of Friendfeed we will soon understand the different concepts that both services came up with.

Friendfeed - put in a nutshell - is another network. It’s all about networking networks. So this means there is a new layer on top of social networking (Facebook), bookmarking pages (Digg), galleries (Flickr) and other services. So be aware, do you want yet another layer? Friendfeed shows typical network abilities like groups (rooms), comments, love/hate content rating,… Things you might like/hate, haha!

You subscribe to other users (your friends) whose content will be delivered into your friendstream filled with Web 2.0 content. These friends must be signed up on Friendfeed, otherwise their content will not be visible - not for you.

So let’s assume that Susan Mayer is your friend on Facebook, but doesn’t really consider signing up on Friendfeed, you will be NOT able to see her content on your stream. If Max Miller is signed up at Friendfeed, he sets up the services he uses (Youtube, Twitter, Amazon Wishlist) and you “friend” him, then you’ll see the content even if you did not sign up for Amazon Wishlist and Twitter.

The content that shows up in the Friendfeed stream are subject to commenting. Everyone signed up on Friendfeed can leave a short comment on it and is encourage to do so…

If someone posted something interesting you can highlight the content by clicking “Like” and if you disliked something you just click “Hide.”

All services supported are listed below. Facebook, the most important network, is still missing.

A PR way to say that their interface just looks rubbish and old-school-gmail like would be “visual shortcomings.” Friendfeed, please do some eye-candy work, I beg you!

Check my public Friendfeed feed here: friendfeed.com/phila.

Friends’ News Feed - Socialthing! versus Friendfeed

Public Profile Pages - Socialthing! versus Friendfeed

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

It seems like there is a certain trust-issue around in the websphere. Having a service pull content from various profiles, status update feeds and image galleries might facilitate the communication with friends but also gets you one step closer to a transparent identity. With the gathering of loads of information comes great power and we all know that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

So as you can see Socialthing! and Friendfeed are slightly different services but after all as far as I get it correctly aimed into the same direction. Getting content together in one feed tracking your online activities.

Jump on new ones or wait for elders to sniff up a feature?

This is one question that we should seriously keep in mind. I am a dynamic user of Web 2.0 - If some new service pops up, I’ll give it a go and see how it improves my internet life. If however, another service makes it even more convenient to do the same action by adopting similar technology, well, then I am likely to be the first (well, not literally, but figuratively) who jumps off the bandwagon as quickly as I jumped onto it (well, not literally, but figuratively, again).

Facebook shouldn’t be left out when discussing who’s Nr 1 nominee for Mr Aggregator

Don’t underestimate the power of *Facebook in this aggregator debate. They recently allow you to add content produced elsewhere to show in your mini-feed and News feed.

Well, this battle is going to be quite interesting and we’ll see who will end up as the winner for the run of Mr Aggregator.

Follow Up

Want a Friendfeed account (free sign-up) or Socialthing invites? 

Follow both services via the Friendfeed Blog and the Socialthing! Blog.

Discussion Points

What social media services do you use on a daily basis?

Do you think that aggregators fetching web content from all kinds of services will last and serve you on a daily basis?

Who is going to emerge from this battle as the winner?

Considering the pros and cons of Socialthing! and Friendfeed, don’t you think it’s time for a hybrid? Might this hybrid solution be called Facebook?

And yes, this is Firefox 3.