Social media aggregators — a list

It’s a social web. People are using a bunch of tools for sharing. Blogs, Vlogs, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter are simply some of the options. Each of them can be used daily or in some cases, by the minute, to share with people what we are doing, as we’re doing it.

The thing is, there are a lot of pages to look at. Do I check Twitter in the morning or my e-mail? Do I check Facebook status, or IM? What can tie things together? Because right now, my e-mail updates me on most of the things that happen. So here is a list of some tools. This doesn’t count google’s new tool. 

1. Flock

Flock is a web browser that integrates various blog, news aggregation, and social networking sites, and is built on Mozilla’s Firefox codebase. When the user logs in to any of the 18 supported social services, the user may allow Flock to remember the user’s account. Then Flock will announce when friends have uploaded photos or published other items. The browser claims to “allow easy media sharing via drag and drop, easy photo uploading, and a built-in blog editor for easy posting from anywhere on the web.” Social networking sites include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Blogger.

I use Flock. It offers added functionality that I am only beginning to use. I can drag and drop photos from Flickr to my blog with ease. i can see all my friends in Facebook without going into Facebook. I can gather tweets, and my yahoo mail and my bookmarks (either delicious or simply bookmarks) in the same place. I could use it as an RSS feeder, but I currently use Bloglines. And therein lies the rub with flock. I use Flock at home and at work — but the two don’t talk since they are downloads.

2. FriendFeed.

This is new, but it promises to be a sort of RSS feed for all your connections. Plus, it’s really well named. From their site:

FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.

Sign up for FriendFeed, invite some friends, and get a customized feed made up of the content that your friends shared — from news articles to family photos to interesting links and videos. FriendFeed automatically imports shared stuff from sites across the web, so if your friend favorites a video on YouTube, you get a link and a thumbnail of the video in your feed. And if your friend likes a news story on Digg, you get a link in your feed. FriendFeed makes all the sites you already use a little more social.

Sign up, and all your feeds and obviously, your friend’s feeds will be fed to you in one place. Hit refresh to see them update if you’re really popular. This is an excellent utility because if you find yourself on a different computer, you can check in to everything you need to look at. The page isn’t the most attractive thing to look at, but it’s a good tool. My guess is that aesthetics will come.

3. MyBlogLog

This is a Yahoo service. Here’s the meat of the pitch:

MyBlogLog enables you to take advantage of your existing presence on the Web and ties it into communities of like-minded readers and authors to add context to the conversations in which you take part.

This is all done through communities. A smart marketer might be able to look at some of these communities and find their target market. Or, simply use MyBlogLog to log things a brand is interested in. If the brand has a blog, Flickr pictures, a YouTube presence, etc, it’s not a bad idea to gather them into one place and help to share them in a more meta way.

The last tool, Tumblr does this as well. I read about is on the VC Blog. Here’s what Fred Wilson says one can do with Tumblr:

It allows you to blog quickly, easily, from your phone or your computer, it encourages reblogging and pulling content in from twitter, typepad, wordpress, blogger, flickr, delicious, last.fm, etc, etc.

Tumblr allows the user to update status through Twitter (or through Tumblr). It offers bookmarking services, and it brings all your social services to one place. Again, for a brand that has it’s feet in various social media, this is a good aggregator. At worst, it’s a good place to send the client to see the updates.

My guess is there are way more of these tools. I think social media aggregators will be the thing this year. Yahoo is turning it’s mail platform into an instant messenger, and I’ll bet more before year’s end. Have you seen other tools out there that are useful? understanding what your target market is using is a good first step in deciding if a brand should.