Optimize Your Social Networking Experience

We're going to make a not-so-shocking revelation. "For an average user, social networking accounts for the most time spent online!" So here's how you can get even better at it.

Use all in one messengers

Why use separate instances of Gtalk, Yahoo!, MSN, IRC, Facebook chat etc.? Instead you can use a multi -protocol messenger such as Digsby (http://www.digsby.com/) or Miranda (http://www.miranda-im.org/) to aggregate all your chat and social networks into one place. Of these Digsby is more visually appealing while Miranda is robust, offering plugin support and customization.

Use extensions

Extensions, especially on Google Chrome allow you to do a lot more and a lot faster when it comes to keeping track of updates and updating your social networks. Social networking, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other network, is all about now. You need access
to updates all the time. Chrome extensions such as “Chromed Bird”, “Facebook for Google Chrome.” etc. give you notifications for comments, update, and replies. They'll also allow you to update status right from a pop-up bubble without ever changing tabs. Head over to https://chrome.google.com/extensions/ for a wide array of extensions.

Chromed Bird extension in action

Phone apps all the way

If you're not using your phone to network on the go, you're losing out on a lot of precious moments in your daily commute where you could be catching up on a lot of happenings. iPhone and Android will have a host of apps but when it comes to lesser mortals like J2ME and Symbian we've found Snaptu to be a very good performer. It's light and fast on the slowest of phones.

Use one-to-many updaters

One of the painful and time consuming aspects of social networking ironically is updating your status on all of those social networks you so enthusiastically joined. Fret not, services such as www.ping.fm will help you update your status in a jiffy on all of your social networks at once. The webapp has an amazing number of services under its umbrella; from common ones like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace to obscure ones such as Identi. ca, Tumblr, and StatusNet. We lost count at 341. Of course, if you don't like ping.fm there's always www.hellotxt.com

Ping.fm Dashboard