Keep an eye on all your friends, and lots more too
WE’RE well into the festive drinking season and mobile social media could help you crash all the right places. They say that Smartphones give you social networks on the go. So you can keep tabs on all your friends (and enemies) as they move from bar to bar. They don’t tell you what a pain in the arse it is, plodding between bitty little screens as you big to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Some inventors have tried to streamline this process. Flipboard, for example, gives you a wonderfully simplified view of every Facebook page and Twitterer that you might be following. It’s like a mini command centre, from which you can monitor everyone’s movements.
Flipboard only works on iPad though. Who wants to carry an iPad from bar to bar to restaurant? Not only is it conspicuous, it’s bound to get lost.
There are systems that will do the same job for smart mobiles. Any Blackberry iPhone, Windows Phones or Android can be secured in your pocket AND is powerful enough to run Friend Stream or My Taptu.
Friend Stream is a widget that runs on HTC handsets (which run Windows or Android operating systems). You can use it to turn all your friends’ updates from Facebook, Flickr and Twitter into one single, convenient news feed. And, of course, pump out all your updates to your own network of friends, followers and foes.
My Taptu, on the other hand, brings all your interests together. Use this app and you can set up a single stream of social, personal interest and business news all on one screen (as long as it’s not a Blackberry screen – My Taptu doesn’t do Blackberries yet). .
My Taptu gives you a preview of the web links material being sent to you. So if someone uses Twitter to send you a link to a restaurant review, you don’t need to download the entire piece, you can read the top lines. And it automatically downloads all the messages, news and pictures onto your phone, ready for you to read. So there’s no WWW.waiting….
Nick Booth is the editor of mobile website Mobbed-online.com.