Ping.fm helps platform overkill + Invites
If you’ve not heard of Ping.fm before but are suffering from social/ microblogging service overkill, Ping.fm is a service for you. The closed beta service has been around for some time, but I only got my hands on an invite recently, and my only gripe: why didn’t someone get me onto this earlier!
Ping.fm is a multiple platform updater. The service allows you to send updates to multiple services from the one point. For example, I can use Ping.fm to update Identi.ca, Plurk, Pownce and Twitter from the one interface, with one message, and one click delivery. I’ve named four services, but that isn’t even half of them. The full list: Bebo, Blogger, Brightkite, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, Xanga.
Users pick the services they want included in Ping.fm, and then via simple operators can also be selective when sending out messages. For example, if you don’t want a message going to every service, you can start with @s for a status update, or @m for a microblog.
So far I’ve only set it up to go out for status messages to Twitter like services and social networking sites, but notably I’ve not included Twitter so far because I don’t usually post “heading out for some food” type messages to Twitter. As a user though, you get to pick or choose to suit your preferred mix.
Ping.fm comes with an iPhone and mobile version, and each user is given a unique email address if they’d prefer to update via email (and this has been my preferred outlet when mobile so far).
As a service I’m lumping it in the Aggregation 1.5 mix. Although it doesn’t aggregate data in, it does push it out, so in one way it’s the opposite of FriendFeed (although FriendFeed does support posting to Twitter). Ping.fm + FriendFeed though together is the ultimate goal in this space, a service that aggregates all incoming information and allows data to be pushed out again. What ever it is, I love it. I can now update multiple services from the one place, so I don’t have to remember to log in and regularly use every service out there.
I’m not sure how many users this is good for, or for how long, but use the code “pingyoulater” to sign up to Ping.fm. It’s a service many of us have been waiting for.
