Twitter and Facebook.. and everything else in ONE

this website has apprently combined all forms of social networking into one convenient location. it is essentially the social network of all social networks

link:www.gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/digsby-puts-your-social-life-in-a-little-box/

The link is without the www.

Here it is:

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/digsby-puts-your-social-life-in-a-little-box/

I have actually been using the Digsby program for my different chatting clients. I use it with AIM and MSN messenger as well as Google Talk. It is currently only works for windows with a mac and linux version coming sometime in the future. What's great about it is that it also supports IRC, Myspace chat, and facebook chat. So you do not have to be logged onto facebook to chat with your friends. Finally, it allows you to check your status on facebook, myspace, and several other networking sites all on the program. For those who are obsessed with checking their facebook every 5 minutes, this might be a good program for them.

Interestingly enough, as the number of social networks and their complexities grow, so do the number of services/programs/webapps that integrate them all.

I have definitely heard of Digsby (http://www.digsby.com/) and tried it out when it was still a little buggy, but I didn't like it too much because I felt like I was on information overload.

On the Mac side of things, I use Adium (www.adiumx.com) because it integrates all the popular instant messaging clients with support for Facebook chat. They are also working on adding Twitter support. The interface is clean and simple, and I would definitely suggest giving this a try.

There are also plenty of websites and webapps you can use to manage all your social networks, and one that I've tried is Meebo (www.meebo.com). It lets you log into all your IM clients at once as well as facebook and myspace chats. Best of all, it's completely web-based and requires no download of an applications--great for times when you're on someone else's computer or a computer that restricts downloads

There are even web browsers that do this. I would suggest Flock (www.flock.com) because it is probably the most popular browser to integrate social networking features.

In other words, there are plenty of ways to integrate your social networks so that they are manageable. There is also a lot of opportunities in this segment because so far, there is no clear-cut "best" option out there. It will be interesting to see which program wins out in the end.