When I was flying last Wednesday evening I started thinking about a tool that would allow users of multiple social networks to manage their content from one place, as opposed to all the individual places they must now log into and become comfortable with.
I often say, “If you’re thinking it, someone’s doing it.” And that has proven true once again. BusinessWeek published a story today that reveals a handful of companies busy working on this very problem. BusinessWeek lists ProfileLinker, ProfileFly, Tabber, SocialURL and Dandelife.com as social network aggregators already in the game.
But how effective are these various offerings? I don’t know, having just learned of them minutes ago. At any rate, BusinessWeek offers a clue.
As useful as these sites may be in pulling together information from other sites onto a single location, they’re less helpful when it comes to sending updates to those various sites. In many cases, that’s because social networks don’t want to share traffic and associated ad dollars with other sites, requiring users to log in before making changes or communicating with friends. “Will a profile aggregator siphon traffic away?” says Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. “If so, the social networks won’t like it very much and will try to shut down the service.”
I’d love to hear from you if you use one of these aggregators? Does it meet your needs? If no, what improvements are you hoping to see implemented?