The First Question: What is a Social Controller?
A Social Controller is a program that allows the user to not only manage their social networks but to also publish information to those social networks. This would include many social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Digg, YouTube, etc.
The Second Question: What do we have now?
Twitter Apps
There are a couple very good programs that help manage your Twitter followers. Tweetdeck, Twhirl, and Seesmic Desktop are powered by Adobe AIR. These all allow users to create groups, find tweets where you are mentioned, direct message, and search Twitter. Twhirl and Seesmic Desktop allow the use of multiple Twitter accounts. Tweetdeck allows users to update their Facebook status at the same time as their Twitter status. Seesmic Desktop can pull data from your Facebook profile and display it alongside of the Twitter feed. These programs all do a great job of making Twitter easier to manage. They allow a way to manage and publish to Twitter.
Social Aggregators
The most well known social aggregator is FriendFeed. FriendFeed pulls information from many other social networks and displays them on one feed. The networks that can be used include Twitter, Pandora, Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Google Reader shared items, any blog with an RSS feed, and many others. You can also post messages on FriendFeed. Anything that comes to your FriendFeed can be automatically sent to Twitter as well. Some people swear by FriendFeed, and some people do not. I personally am one who does not. The downside to me is the lack of publishing ability and the fact that the aggregation process is very slow. I might share a feed in Google Reader and it will not show up to FriendFeed until much later that day. I can post the same thing to Twitter and (barring any server issues) it will be sent to all of my followers immediately. A discussion can take place immediately, not many hours after the fact.
The First Social Controllers
The first social controller that I tried was the web browser Flock. This web browser is made by Mozilla and attempts to create a social network sidebar while being able to surf the web. You can connect Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, RSS feeds, e-mail, and more in the left sidebar. There is also a web-clipboard that can hold links and pictures. Another feature is a simple blog editor based in the browser. Only one Twitter account is allowed to be signed in at once and managing the single account is very difficult as well. Publishing is fairly simple, but managing seems to be very difficult.
Another social controller that I have recently found is called EventBox. EventBox is a native Mac program that supports Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, RSS feeds, Flickr, Digg, and Reddit. It appears to only allow one Twitter account and you cannot create groups with this. Like Flock, EventBox is very easy to publish to these sites all in one place, but managing is not simple.
The Final Question: Where is the Ultimate Social Controller?
The Ultimate Social Controller would be a single program that streamlines publishing and managing of multiple social networks. This would include managing Twitter with groups, searches, mentions, etc. It would also be able to support multiple Twitter accounts. The home page of Facebook would be displayed here where the user could see and comment/like on the feed. Users would be able to upload pictures from Flickr/Picasa, and they could see pictures others have uploaded. Videos could be uploaded directly to YouTube and users would be able to view the videos they subscribed to. Users could see their RSS feeds and share/comment on posts directly from the program. Blogs could be written and uploaded directly in this program.
This would be my Ultimate Social Controller. Some people believe that Google Wave might revolutionize internet communication and could become the ultimate social controller. I, for one, cannot wait to see what becomes of this.
What would you like to see in your Social Controller?
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