Consolidate. Network Aggregators 101.

So, you've been staying up until 3:00am to touch base with all of your social networking contacts in your chosen networks. Feeling like you have a million login names and passwords to remember for each of your networks.

You are so exhausted that your writing is severely suffering and your blogging isn't consistent.

Feeling burnt out, you wonder what your options are. Which networks do you sacrifice?

The answer?...None!

Currently, the most efficient option for consolidating your networking is to choose one of a relatively new breed of applications called social network aggregators. These attempt to consolidate (with varying success) your variety of social networking profiles into one.

Welcome to the biggest competitors in this field.

8Hands "With 8hands, you can organize and optimize your different online profiles from one place, while receiving real time notifications of your events...
IM and share online content with your friends: Just drag and drop your YouTube videos, Flickr pics and more into our easy to use chat window. Get notifications of new comments, messages, friend requests, videos, feeds and more - in real time! Receive summaries and statistics on your social networking activities."

Claim ID "One of the greatest things about having a claimID page is that you can easily provide people searching for you with a real picture of your identity. With claimID you can claim your blog, your website and news articles that mention your name into a central place. If someone is searching for you, they previously might not have found all of those important pages. With claimID, you can put your best face forward and let people see the identity you wish to present."

Fuser "Fuser develops tools that improve Internet user's digital lifestyles. Our tools make it easier to communicate online, whether that means one web-based inbox for email and social networks or some other method our community has yet to dream up. You tell us! Our users play a key role in the development of our products."

Minggl "Minggl is a toolbar that brings your social sites together in one place, feeding you the latest activities of friends, no matter where you are on the web...Get notifications of email, comments, and friend activity from Facebook while browsing other websites...Flip quickly between profiles such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube without logging in."

MyLifeBrand "We give you a place to manage your social networks and message your social network friends. We have upgraded this service by adding Hi5 and Tagged...a place to create a community of your own. We are introducing tools that allow you to auto create blogs, wikis, event calendars and forums. The cool thing about our communities is you can add up to 8 live, browsable URL's to add to the content of your community. Plus your community can have access to the groups pages and friends on other social networks!"

otherEgo.com "It's simple to share your Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, Xanga, Blogs, Websites, or anything else that has a URL in your otherEgo profile!...A social network aggregator simply links and/or shows your profiles from other social networks (i.e. Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, Youtube). Most social network aggregators accomplish this by providing a simple link and image that you can click on. OtherEgo allows you to load them inside your profile. It's kind of like a social network profile browser."

Profilactic "Profilactic is a social media aggregator that pulls in just about everything you and your friends create online...We support 111 social sites by default; however, you can add as many custom sites as you'd like, so essentially we support them all."

Profileomat "profileomat.com is a shareable Profile Aggregator that lists all your personal Websites, Social Networks, Blogs, Contact Info, Photo Albums and other Profiles in one Profile. Plus: People can leave a message in your Profile (this is something between a guestbook and reputation system)."

ProfileFly "Profilefly.com is a site that makes it easy to Control + Promote all of your:
Profiles – Social Networks, Blogs, Photo Sites, Professional, Love & Dating, Social Bookmark Sites, Personal Websites Contacts – Email & Instant Messengers
Bookmarks – Video links, Cool Sites, News, & more At ProfileFly.com you can also stream content from your favorite sites like Flickr, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Digg, & Last.FM. All you have to do is include the RSS feed from the site your adding to your Profile."

Readr "Readr works with most blog, photo, and video services, from Flickr and Blogger to YouTube, Myspace, and Facebook...Keep up with your friends. Find out when your friends post new pictures, write in their blog, post a video, and more - no matter which sites they use."

Snag "Snag aggregates information from your accounts at various social networks. Instead of having to visit each of your networks separately, you can find friends, read messages, and get updates from all of your networks in one place by using Snag...While Snag supports a few of the popular social networks, there are so many more that aren't included here. In developing Snag, we simply chose the networks that we use and know."

Second Brain "Second Brain is an interface for all your online content. With smart collection tools and community features, we make it easy to create, manage, search and share content on multiple services. Access yourGet your content in your personal internet library...This is a beta preview release. This means that it's not really finished yet, but good enough to give it a try."

SocialNetwork.in "To help you aggregate links to all of your profiles, including social networks, chat, VOIP, and other communities. To help you aggegate links to all the social sites you want to monitor. To help you aggregate links to all your friends on various social and chat networks. To provide a simple means for you to rate social and chat networks using a 1-10 scale and comments. To provide a simple API for developers to use to extend their services and better serve your needs and interests."

Socialstream "Socialstream emphasizes improving social connections by making it more efficient to communicate with, share with, and view the social content of all the people in a user's online social network. Socialstream provides a compelling user experience because it aggregates content across many different networks so a user has a single location to discover new content and communicate. The goal of Socialstream is to present social information in a way that ties it to the person who posted the information, and not the site from which it came."

SocialURL "SocialURL is a social community platform enabling you to organize your online identities. Connnect to all your social network sites with one URL."

Spokeo "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...We guarantee you'll learn something new about your friends."

Tabber "Tabber is an online social address book that allows you to: import your contacts, get updates from contacts that are Tabber members, watch your contacts live information on the web as they update it (Myspace, Blogs, Photo Galleries, and more!)"

Upscoop "Upscoop is a fun, free service that allows you to find all your friends on all the major social networks, such as MySpace and Friendster."

Zoolit "Zoolit is a shareable Web page that lists all your personal sites. Your Zoolit Landing Page is always current and up to date, providing the world with all of your personal Websites, Social Networks, Blogs, contact info, and Photo and Video Sharing sites...When you add, change or delete a Website address, simply make the change on your Zoolit Page and its updated everywhere you have your Zoolit Button or Link."

While it may be a daunting task to network, it seems that it may be another daunting task to choose a social network aggregator.

As it turns out, there may be a solution for those who choose not to use one of the above options.

Steve Rubel with Micro Persuasion wrote an article that explains how you can simply use your Gmail account as your aggregating tool. Here is the link to his article. Click Here

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, it seems that social networking is expanding our time spent on the computer, instead of with personal relationships. In order to balance our time, choosing an aggregator needs to be at the top of the priority list.

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