Such a SocialThing(!)

Thanks to Neville Hobson (@jangles) I've managed to get an invite to join Socialthing!, which officially went into private beta today

Socialthing! is different from the other social network aggregators out there (FriendFeed is popular due to some ex-Googlers starting it and a list of other aggregators can be found here) due to the way it determines which of your friends to track.

While FriendFeed requires users to create their own list of friends for FriendFeed, Socialthing! automatically detects who your friends are on the social services to which you belong, saving you a both time and hassle.

The distinction might not sound obvious, but as TechCrunch reported today, "Socialthing!’s method actually makes things a lot easier, both for initial set up and for longer term maintenance. When you sign up for Socialthing!, you only have to provide it with your credentials to sites like Facebook and Pownce. And as time goes by, you don’t have to worry about setting up new friends on the service because it will automatically know that you’ve become friends with people elsewhere. In contrast, FriendFeed requires you to both explicitly designate friends during the initial configuration and manually add new friends over time."

Another benefit Socialthing! has over FriendFeed is its focus on allowing users to send data back to applications such as Twitter. For example, I can respond to tweets directly from Socialthing!.

It's also very simple to use and looks very clean. Unfortunately though, it just doesn't keep me updated with tweets as well as other services I've tried, such as Thwirl or Twitbin. Socialthing! groups tweets from people together, often in threes, meaning that I often miss the drift of conversations - vital to be able to use Twitter properly.

Ultimately, there is little to choose between the two at this stage. FriendFeed currently supports a wider range of applications than Socialthing! (28 vs. 11), but FriendFeed doesn't let you see Facebook updates.

Time, as always, will tell.