Managing Social Networking
I’ve been recently enjoying exploring social networking programs like Twitter and Facebook, and I’ve been a long-time user of instant messaging (MSN Messenger, AOL’s AIM, Yahoo Instant Messenger and Apple’s iChat) as well as web-based email through Yahoo. The problem, however, is keeping track of all of these different possible communications systems without going crazy.
I’ve known there were clients (such as Adium for the Mac) that combine multiple IM services into one interface. However, today I’ve been exploring Digsby, which not only combines IM services, but also social networking applications such as Twitter and Facebook.
Now I have one application that sits on my screen and alerts me if any buddy is online from any of my online accounts, if there have been updates to any of the Twitter users that I follow, updates to my Facebook friends, or new emails to my Yahoo account. It will take a few weeks to see if it really changes my habits long-term, but for now I am finding myself far more likely to use these services because I can do it so much more quickly.