This Is Why I Started Blogging

I have found that when a topic interests me I have the tendency to talk with multiple people about it in various circles of friends. Sure, it drives my wife crazy since she feels like I am always repeating myself, but for the most part the people hearing what I am talking about are hearing it for the first time. Then what happens is a few days later I will find a website or article that references or plays off the idea that I had been talking about in these various circles. I had the option of sending out a mass email to a bunch of people who don’t really know each other or each others views on the issue/conversation/idea OR I could send out multiple emails to various groups of people.

Now I forego any direct contact with my friends and instead just blog about it.

Anyway, with various circles of friends this past week I was discussing social networking sites, more specifically that there are way too many of them and that there should be a meta-social network that allows you to have all of your social network pages managed from a single site. Basically you would be able to get your friends feeds an updates from all of the social networks you were a part of in one place. Ideally the uber-social network would be able to populate your social network pages as well, but as some folks pointed out to me, that would have a ‘bot’ controlling your page and most sites shut those pages down.

Anyway, to track the doings and happening of all your online friends there is now Spokeo.

Spokeo is a program that eliminates having to frequently check for your friends updates to their blogs, Flickr accounts, MySpace pages, etc. and lists them all in one place. Eliminate those daily/weekly/monthly emails from your online accounts and just track them all from one location. or, in their own words: “Do you know how many of your friends blog on MySpace or upload photos to Flickr? We don’t think you do. Spokeo searches popular networks for your friends’ blogs, photos, videos and music.”

Currently checking on 35 different sites (with “More networks being added every day!”) Spokeo will be able to let you knowabut updates to your friends Amazon Wish List, new posts to their Vox Blog, new photos uploaded to their Flickr account and even updates to their LinkedIn account (plus 31 other possible updates).

So, while this isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of social networking sites, it will make it easier to keep track of all of your friends various postings to the world-wide-inter-web-community. Plus they have a cute little hedgehog for a logo, I mean how can you go wrong?