Today I saw the release of a new social network feed desktop app,
Skimmer. This got me thinking that I should offer my thoughts on the multitude of apps. I am a big fan of the recent influx of desktop apps trying to capitalize on the multitude of social networks that slowly taking over our lives. These apps work by accessing the API's of the networks and bringing you the feed to a desktop client. I have been using
Twhirl to manage my twitter account for months now, and couldn't be happier. It is a great piece of software that allows you to almost 100% manage your Twitter activity from a window not much larger than an IM client I'm sure you already have. Through the use of Adobe AIR, Twhirl offers not only a great looking, but great functioning product. I use it everyday to keep track of what everyone is doing, as well as update my own feed.
This new product, Skimmer, is yet another player in this rapidly growing field. When I first opened the program I was very impressed. It looks great and had a very easy sign-up/log-in interface. However, that is where my love fest started dwindling. While the feed is great looking and set up very well, you can't update your information across the different networks. This was dissapointing to me because unlike Twhirl, with Skimmer you can log into your Facebook profile. I thought this was going to be my one stop app. However once I realized that I couldn't, or at least could figure out how to, update either my Facebook status or my Twitter status. With this said this program is essentially a pretty looking Friendfeed but extremely limited in what it can do. I know it is young and as it grows I'm sure there will be more features added but until then it will not be used by me.
There are many more programs that can be used but for me there is no reason to review them because I am so enthralled with the ease of Twhirl that things like
TweetDeck shouldn't be included in the same post. I hope you find this useful and will take the time out to find the tool that works well for you.
My name is Garrett Scott and I have a tremendous passion for all things internet related. I am an online marketing guy who loves the worlds of Social Media and Social Media Marketing with a whole lot of SEM rolled in.
