Social networking services are popping up nearly daily it seems. As virtual assistants, we work to continue to stay connected and “on the grid” with colleagues, clients — even friends and family — in new and unique ways. We use services such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us, My Space, Ma.gnolia, Flickr, Yahoo 360, Stumble Upon, Bright Kite and Jaiku.
Managing your online presence, or the online presence of your clients, is important. But keeping track of the growing list is a daunting task — the ways that you interact with these services vary, so how do you corral all your data in one location?
Last evening, I participated in a VA teleseminar on the topic of social media by Craig Cannings of VAClassroom.com, hosted by Marty Fahnke of Conference Call University. One of the things our presenter discussed was the management of an online presence. Some refer to this management as profile aggregation. The presenter spoke about Tabber, which I’d not heard of, as a tool for such management. I have used and am familiar with FriendFeed, and wanted to compare the two services.
According to Mashable Social Networking News, Tabber has had a complete makeover in the past few months. When I browsed to Tabber.org, my first impression was how simple the main page of the site was. After creating a login, Tabber encouraged me to set up accounts. The choices of account types are: Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, Last FM, Ma.gnolia, Pandora, Picasa, Reddit, Twitter or a blog rss feed.
In contrast, FriendFeed.com has 35 different services that it allows you to add to your account. Some that are not on Tabber that are on FriendFeed include popular services such as LinkedIn, YouTube, iLike and Furl.
Adding accounts to Tabber proved a bit more challenging when I added my Facebook account. The instructions in pale gray you see in the screen shot below right say:
“Navigate to http://www.facebook.com/minifeed.php?filter=11, right click My Status link at the bottom right and copy the link into the first box above. Then navigate to http://www.facebook.com/friends/?status and copy the link that says Friends’ Status Feed into the second box above.”
If you are not very familiar with Facebook or don’t readily understand what Tabber is trying to get you to capture, you might quit trying right here. It’s not as difficult to add other types of accounts that Tabber offers, and to be fair, just about anything that has an rss feed could be added to either account — but for those newer to the subject of social media, there could definitely be some confusion.
While it seems easier to add accounts using FriendFeed, Tabber’s clean, minimalistic interface is appealing. Yet I like the fact that I can run FriendFeed using Twhirl, an IM-like client that operates from your desktop on the new Adobe Air platform. Twhirl means that I don’t have to have a browser open to interact with my Twitter account. But then, my cell phone can accomplish the same thing! Do I really need one more IM-like application hanging around on my desktop? For you Greasemonkey fans, FriendFeed tabs has been released for Firefox and Greasemonkey. Give it a look by clicking here.
A word of caution regarding security is important to mention here. Choose what accounts you are comfortable giving an aggregator (or any other type of web site) your login or access info carefully! Services like Tabber and FriendFeed seem safe and mainstream, but social networking applications and services are popping up so rapidly — make informed choices about what data you should share with whom — particularly if you are using profile aggregation to corral the online media presence of your clients. (It’s one thing to experiment with your own “play accounts” but quite a different risk to do so with your client’s precious information and online presence.)
I’d enjoy reading your comments on this post about profile aggregators, or about Tabber and FriendFeed in particular. Care to connect with me on Tabber, FriendFeed or Twitter? Here are my links:
http://www.tabber.org/norarubinoff
About the author: At Your Service Cincinnati principal Nora Rubinoff’s core virtual assistant services include social media management, WordPress support, online reputation management, project management, customer relationship management, customized e-mail marketing campaigns and productivity enhancement. Nora is a Mac and PC specialist. Nora is enthusiastic about architecting solutions that enable clients to make more out of their business day.
Nora is a recipient of the Karen S. House Award for Regional Collaboration as well as the Women of Excellence Award, several state and local government proclamations and holds the IVAA EthicsCheck™ certification. Nora is a past board member for IVAA and serves on several community advisory boards. Read more from this author
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