Rants and Ruminations

Every so often there is software that you stumble across or your friends tell you about that fills such a need that you don’t know how you made do without it. The Earth shifts on it axis, the Heavens open up to you, lollipops and unicorns fall from the sky!  That is exactly how I felt after Richard told me about Digsby.   In a nutshell, Digsby puts all your IM, Email, and Social Networking access and monitoring all in one spot.  No more logging into 967 different websites to update your status and check messages.

Instant Messaging
Nothing new in the functionality here.  There are several programs that will allow you to run all your IM accounts from one spot.  It has the capabilities of checking your AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and Facebook Chat accounts at once.  Strangely it does not check Myspace chat but, more than likely, that is because the Myspace API is not available for public consumption.

Email
Digsby will also check all the email accounts you set up and notify you of new messages.  If you use server storage email accounts like Gmail or Hotmail then you can send, delete, reply to or otherwise manage your account right from the Digsby console.

Social Networking
Here is where Digsby stands out from everyone else.  You can add your Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to Digsby.   This gives you the ability to check all your messages and notifications as well as update all your statuses from one location.  You also get live notifications whenever your friends do anything to their accounts.

Overall
This has been a real time saver for me. Now, granted, after I installed Digsby I have set this blog, my Facebook, and my Twitter accounts to all play nicely together so I only update my Twitter and it updates everything else from there. But that is another post. :^)

The only complaint I have is that when you add several accounts to it the User Interface can become a bit clunky and convoluted. A small price to pay, I say.

It has seemed for the last several months that I have begun to leave MySpace behind.  I find myself spending much more time on Facebook, and now, using Twitter.  While I don’t know if I will ever totally abandon MySpace I am probably not going to be updating the page except with things that update there automatically (blog posts, tweets, etc.)

With the strong emergence of Facebook over the last 12-18 months it seems to me that the two sites really cater to two totally different age groups.  All my youth group kids are on MySpace while practically everyone else I know past high school age are on Facebook.  At first it was not too much effort keeping the two synched but now that I am posting on a much more regular basis it has become a little pain.  Now, there are some tools, like Digsby, that has made this easier but even with that I seem to be just treating MySpace like a red headed step child.

For now I will keep the account alive but if it goes away suddenly…don’t be surprised!

I will be the first to admit that I was a little skeptical about using Twitter when I first set up my account.  I have a hard enough time keeping up with my blog, Facebook. and MySpace (which is really beginning to suck, btw…more on that later).  In this post I’m just gonna touch on some of the things I like about Twitter.

Accessibility: I really didn’t see the uses for Twitter when I first set up my account but once I started really looking at the tools available for using it, the coolness factor shot through the roof!  I am currently using four different methods to post to send my tweets: digsby, text message from my cell, the twitter tools widgit for wordpress, and the Twitter website if I have to.  I haven’t used the Twitter module for my Drupal powered websites but that is next up on the docket.  I also get the updates through digsby and they show up on the left sidebar of my blog .

Share My Thoughts: One of the big reasons I don’t have more posts on my blog is that I usually don’t have that much to say and I quickly lose interest when I have to force myself to post.  Microblogging is the answer to my problem!  I hit my Twitter with a few thouyghts throughout the day and reply to the tweets that I need to.  It is also a great way to have targeted conversations.

Making New Friends: I am a huge fan of talking about different things with a wide variety of people.  Since I now work from home and have very little actual human contact things like this are a lifeline to sanity for me.  Plus the advantage of this is that I find it easier to connect with people with targeted intersts that I am looking for.  For example…I am in the process of trying to figure out how to leverage the power of social networking in expanding my church’s presence.  I have found several people on Twitter that are doing just that and have already learned a great deal from them.

Shameless Promotion: Of course it goes without saying that this is a pretty good tool for website promotion.  It requires some care and maintenance to get the word out about your site but once you build that following, and your content is relevant to the audience, it will go through the roof.

So those are some of my main reasons I am digging Twitter.  What are yours?  SHare your thoughts with me either in the comments or on my Twitter page . Or use @steveblount if you already have an account.