ASK STEVE #5 - Posting to all your Social accounts in one click
By Steve Poland • August 3, 2007
Steve,
Hey, we’re working on ...
It will allow people to easily add all their twitter, jaiku, pownce, facebook, livejournal, blogger etc accounts.
The users will then be able to simply write whatever they want to post ONCE and choose which of their services they wish to post it to, and hit post. Their blog post will then be posted automatically to all the services they chose.
This idea arose due to the fact that new twitter-like apps are coming out all the time and some people move between them, but not all their friends move with them. So they have to post on multiple sites for all their friends to be able to be kept up-to-date. So with this they could just post their stuff once and it goes to whatever ones they wish.
Also users should be able to get all their updates from the different sites in one place. Save them checking all their social sites to get their friends updates. Although this feature is still under consideration as to whether it would be feasible to add this extra feature.
We don’t currently have any money making plans for it, as we have some larger sites in development that would help fund such smaller applications that we have came up with.
Its not currently open for users yet, but we’re getting there rather quickly.
Just wondering what your thoughts were on it, i think it would appeal to a lot of people, as it is very simple to use and the need is there.
Cheers
Joe Finnigan
...
Joe,
Sounds like a good concept — just trying to think whether I’d use it. Like you (and most), I have many social accounts - Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, my blog, etc. Problem is, I typically have to login to all of them at some point to see if I have new messages or comments from others — or to see what’s new on my friend’s accounts (since this isn’t being pushed to me anyhow).
I guess it’d be convenient to go to one site and be able to input a message, then check boxes next to the services I’d want that message published to. But going back to my paragraph above, doesn’t that eliminate the social parts of all those social services I’m apart of — I don’t want to just share with the world, but I want to see what my world (friends/family/colleagues) are up to as well.
Then there’s the security question — would I really give up all my logins/passwords to all of these sites to one (financially unbacked) website (that would be very susceptible to being hacked — yet not have the security in place to truly lock this down)?
I likely wouldn’t use this service. 
Comments
2 Responses to “ASK STEVE #5 - Posting to all your Social accounts in one click”
Got something to say?
What about creating a desktop widget (I apologize that I am having a brain freeze right now about some of their names) that would live outside of the browser. This way, when Steve is visiting all his buddy buddies at his various “worlds” and decides to reply to a message or broadcast to that particular community, instead of using that sites “compose” function he would use wheezio’s desktop widget? I’m sure some top notch encryption could be put in place (and explained to pain in the >>> users like Steve
) stating that all your login info would be encrypted from the time you enter it from your computer, till it is deposited into wheezio’s db. Might it not be possible to simply have that login info stored in a cookie or some client side file and not even be transfered, ever, to wheezio, but instead only applied to the destination community? I’m pretty sure this is how my “Gmail Manager” firefox extension works when I check my email accounts.
And might it not also be possible to create a nice little javascript popup bookmark that could create a web based widget you would use at a spur of the moment and eliminate the need for the desktop download.
And how about if you are out and about, away from your browser of choice, the user could simply hit wheezio’s site, login, pop up the widget window and then surf on to their favorite community and do their posting?
Come on Steve, help these folks out here! (But keep up the fun/good work regardless!)
A more realistic option is exactly what James touched on. A desktop client that sits nicely as a widget or as a tray icon that embraces all the core functions of these services. You want to send messages out? Do so. You want to view all your friends’ messages? Consider it done. Need a history log for you to go back later? You sure got it. You want a central secure login system? Sure thing, the standalone application sits on your PC, the security depends on your ownership and management of your PC.
Clean and simple.
Even better, keep it open source.
Not everything has to be via browser. Something that many internet companies have mistaken.