Yesterday, I talked about TwInfluence, and some of the other questionably useful Twitter API applications. I think I may have finally found a good one: Tweet What You Spend.

@TWYS is the company behind Tweet What You Eat, which also looks cool,  it’s just not one I’ve gotten into yet.

Tweet What you Spend is simple, and aims to answer the question - what happens to my cash between trips to the ATM? If you’re anything like me, you don’t normally carry cash, in fact, I so rarely carry cash that it drives my husband a little batty.

All you do is (and I’m assuming you’re a Twitter user as I get into this) follow @twys, and direct message them your expenditures, like this: d twys Coffee 2.30. That entry then shows up in your personal cash journal.

I mentioned @twys to a few people talking about other APIs tonight, and while they thought it was an interesting service, but they already get that through their various financial programs and also through their online banking. See, for me, that means that I need to be more organized than I am currently not, and  I’ve proven in the past that “financially organized” is not a good label for me. It’s really not, and yet, this little program has made me much more conscious of my spending, in a way that even being on the broke side hasn’t done. I’m more organized about my money, know exactly what I’ve spent it on and which bills I’ve paid etc. 

I can also information on which categories I’ve spent money in, all with a simple drag and drop feature; I can get a pie chart of my spending and see where it’s costing me the most.

Now, in order for me to keep track of my money, I just have to send a text message to @twys and it’s all recorded nicely for me. AND, I can export it to a comma separared values page as well.

It might not be for everyone, but if you’re anything like me and wonder where all your cash actually goes, or you just want to keep track of things, check out Tweet What You Spend and see how it goes!  (image source: screenshots of my account)

Ever since I started participating more in the social media world, I’ve been corrected when using the word “influential” to describe a group, or a person. Apparently, the Social Media elite would rather be considered “interesting”. Personally, I’d like to be both.This internal debate between influential and interesting has been boiling around in my brain for some time, and even more so since I started playing with TwInfluence.

 On the one hand, these kinds of little random statastic applications are totally useful for people like me - I pitch myself as a loudmouth.  Being able to say that my personal reach is over 1.4 million people is immensly helpful. Things like TwInfluence back my words up. (image source: screenshot)

On the other hand, there’s so many of these little applications out there that the introduction of yet one more makes me roll my eyes and ask “another one??”

I’ve found one that I really do like, and I’ll be posting about that tomorrow. I just asked my Twitter followers what their favourite APIs are, and now I ask you - what is your favourite API for Twitter?

I haven’t been this excited about a new social site in ages, but I’m really interested to see what happens with Delver.

I’ve been wondering if search was going to start trending this way – a way to be able to search your friends and their feeds, intelligently – for a while now, and it’s starting to percolate.

Information overload and social networking fatigue are big topics these days – and everyone is feeling it. The more friends you add, the more friends they add, the more that firehose of information opens up.

AideRSS is working on helping quiet the noise, but that’s more dependent on what the community overall thinks. What if that’s not what you find interesting or want to read about? That becomes a problem, and quickly.

Basically, what Delver does is pull content from your social graph to find just the information you’re looking for from the people you admire and/or trust. Overall, by using your friends information and their social graphs, it makes finding information and content a way more personal experience.

All of the big networks like Facebook, Google, and MySpace are fighting for control of your social graph, but while they’re duking it out in the ring, services like Delver offer a simple workaround to tap into the power of your social network.

Delver is still in it’s early stages, so I’m planning on keeping an eye on it to see where this new search format goes.

There’s lots of places online for people to hang out. FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, even MySpace. I know there’s more I haven’t mentioned.

When I saw a friend playing with Signal Patterns, I thought it might be cool to check out, until I realized that although it’s fun, it’s just another social networking site. One more place trying to fight for my, and my friend’s attention. Great.

The first part of the site is a personality test - which is essentially just Myer’s Briggs only prettier! (this is pretty accurate though)

After you get your results, you have an opportunity to connect with your friends who have also completed their quizzes and compare notes. Except, um, we already did that via IM and email. Once I realized I had to go searching for them, I didn’t bother taking the second step. (image source, screenshot by me)

Signal Patterns has another quiz you can take to determine what kind of music you should be listening to, and has you listen to and rate a series of clips. For me, that required more effort than I was prepared to put in. Headphones, reorganizing etc etc.

In the end, it was fun seeing my personality in the pretty colours above, and I might go take the music one at some point, but I’ve already got several places I connect with friends online. I don’t have the energy to devote time to another site.

Mahalo Social has expanded to allow you to look at and manage your current social networking and social web applications within their interface. Now I am not big on using Mahalo as a search tool in general, in fact I don’t know that many people that are. This feature though allows you to just log into Mahalo and be able to go through your different social networking profiles without having to log into them separately or leave the site.

The ability for me to go in and check any of my profiles from one source is nice though, I still don’t think that this is a complete aggregation solution by any stretch of the imagination. I personally want to be alerted to new information involving my social stream which this doesn’t do. To be honest I don’t know if I can call this an aggregator, there really isn’t any aggregation of data. This is just a simple tool for people that want most of their social networking profiles in one place.

I still dream of a complete social aggregator, one day it will happen, one day.

To add my profile on Mahalo, click here.

I am in love. That isn’t an easy thing for me to say but today it just freely rolls off of my tongue.

For awhile I have been looking for a social networking aggregation program that had a specific set of features, most notably the ability to have more than one profile from the same social networking service monitored. I have tried different web based software and didn’t find one that I really liked until I found the desktop application 8hands.

This program sits on your desktop just like any other IM type client. 8hands allows you to aggregate up to 15 profiles including multiple profiles from MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and your Twitter account. Beyond that you can also incorporate various RSS feeds as well so you can stay up to date without having to use a separate reader program. The desktop application will notify you in real time of any new messages, blog posts, comments, etc.

The program automatically ranks the people that you are in constant contact with so they are easy to find and track. You can also order the list yourself if you prefer.

Also you can send IM’s to friends via the client. Beyond that it works as a management tool for your media, if you want to send a friend a picture from your flickr or facebook account you can do it right from this program. It is an easy way to manage a lot of your content and share it in an easy manner.

Down the road 8hands is looking to incorporate Bebo, Friendster, and various other social networking services.

I have been using this program for a few days now and really am enjoying it. The only criticisms I have of it is that they want you to use their IM software, I would love if this program also allowed me to bring my YIM, AIM, and MSN chat into the fold so now I have one desktop application to watch over all my social web applications. Also I think that my systems performance has lagged a little bit since installing the application, this is something I am going to keep my eye on a little bit more over the next week.

I can’t recommend this program enough, for anyone that has multiple accounts this is a godsend.

If you are using it please let me know your thoughts, and if you are trying it I would like to hear about your first impressions.
Technorati Tags: 8hands, social networking, myspace, facebook, RSS, youtube, flickr, twitter

Site: Pownce.com

Members: ??? (still invite only at the time this entry was written)

Features:

Digg fan boys and techo geeks exploded with the announcement of Pownce. This website and desktop application allows users to send music, photos, messages, links, and events to one another.

When you send your file, link, message, or event you have the ability to broadcast it to your entire list or message people individually.

File size is restricted to 10mb per file sent, or for twenty dollars a year you can sign up for a “pro” account which allows you to send files up to 100MB. (Note: the pro account also makes it so you won’t see ads and you get a special badge next to your name)

Review:

It is a nice little interface that renders Twitter pointless, well for those of you who use Twitter, and if you do use Twitter you may want to consider getting out of the house more. It is an easy way to get information out to your friends quickly and efficiently, well that is if your friends are on Pownce. If they aren’t an early adopter, they probably aren’t on there. You are limited by being able to only send out six friend invites as well, so it isn’t like you can covert a whole network of people over easily.

Their desktop software is like an IM on steroids, but the problem with this is it yet another client for people to download.

Don’t get me wrong I do like the site and the desktop interface but tweaks need to be made with the setup to make it truly worthwhile.

1) Global IM interaction- Something along the lines of trillian, I don’t want yet ANOTHER messaging application running.

2) RSS feed integration- It would be nice if your profile had that.

3) Let me check my address book- One major pet peeve I have about social networking or social bookmarking or microblogging websites is that they do not allow us to use our e-mail address book to see if friends are already on the site. Pownce doesn’t allow you to check for that, plus their search is rather clumsy.

Pownce is a nice site and application but the functionality can be questioned until they make some changes, this site is just for early adopters and not all that practical.

Technorati Tags: social networking, microblogging, pownce, digg, fanboys

Site: Hoverspot.com

Users: Honestly… I don’t care on this one…

Features:

Normally I would sit here and try to pick out some of the different features of the website that are redeeming qualities, however there is no such thing with hoverspot. It just feel like someone decided to start a social networking website with some friends with the goal of jamming advertising down my throat.

It has the point system that we see on some of the other social networking sites, but it seem less about participating and encouraging people to view content than to get people to whore the site out to new people. It just feels like a giant MLM scheme to me.

Review:

I would rather jab a spork into my eyeball than ever go back to that site again. Needless to say I am not going to recommend the site, in fact I might openly root for them to go out of business.

Technorati Tags: social networking site reviews, hoverspot.com

Site: buzznet.com

Members: 6 million

Features:

Buzznet tries to deliver an all out multimedia approach using the same base for you to hold all your video, music, and pictures. Also you can blog, as well as communicate like other social networking websites.

You can import your profile from other social networking sites, which makes setting up your profile fast and efficient.

The site allows you to “buzz” particular entries, tags, photos, and videos much like Digg but for a younger set.

In looking at the site there wasn’t anything to me that really sets them apart from other social networking sites that was significant.

Review:

I honestly don’t understand how they even have 6 million people on this site. Much like Tagworld I experienced lockups occasionally while surfing the site, like it struggled to load the content. While I like the idea of being able to “buzz” individual media I still don’t understand what the appeal of this site would be over any other social networking site, considering most of them are carrying larger media bases.

There isn’t a clear way to use this site to market on, and I have to say that this is one that I would clearly pass up. It would land on the third tier of social networking blogs, in the nether regions with other upstarts that don’t separate themselves from the pack.

Technorati Tags: buzznet, social networking site reviews

Site: Imeem.com

Users: ??? No Data Provided

Features:

Imeem is another site that promises to be a content management site where you can deploy all your different types of content to other websites. It is basically trying to combine Flickr, Youtube, Blogger, and other social networking sites into one setup. You can create playlists of videos, music, and photos from your own content or content that has been created within the community.

I honestly have to say that their setup was extremely easy to navigate, while there is nothing that sets it apart from some of the newer sites that have sprung up except for the navigation, which was really intuitive.

Review:

While much like the other new social networking sites that I have and will review this month I don’t think this is a key place to invest your time or effort for marketing yourself or your business.

I would place this on the upper part of the third tier of social networks, I like the layout, concept, and usability. If you were looking for a place to house all of your diverse content, this wouldn’t be a bad place to do it. However for our purposes here I really can’t recommend it.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking Site Reviews, Imeem.com