Of Social Networks . . . . And Work

A visit to an internet café in town just gave me a reminder of how much Zimbabweans love social networking. I had just read an article on TechCrunch about the social web and how it might not be surprising to hear about a Facebook browser (fancy that). Anyway with all this Facebook frenzy around I just thought I would add a few tips, for all those guys that love social networks but are at work. Imagine your boss coming into your office seeing you on Facebook!! You love Facebook, Google Talk etc., but just can’t be seen chatting or browsing because you are at work.

Well don’t despair good people I have met 2 discrete apps I would like to introduce to all those who don’t know them yet.

I first met Digsby when I was still a student in college and boy did I love this little handy tool. Digsby in general integrates all your social sites (Facebook, Twitter etc.) plus all your email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo), Instant Messaging (Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, etc.). You basically add these accounts put in your password and it automatically connects. You can have multiple Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts managed by Digsby. In the event that you receive an email it gives you a pop-up to alert you and when you click that link you are taken to your email account. How convenient!

It gets better. This little tool also manages to integrate all your instant messaging accounts; I managed to put 2 Google talk accounts plus a Yahoo Messenger account. So basically I have all my chat messages coming from one application instead of having multiple applications running on my PC.

And it keeps getting better. For all of you guys who are into Facebook, this is an answer, first it allows you to log on to Facebook see the latest posts from friends, you can comment, like, etc. It also allows you to post to your Facebook wall, all this from a tiny app with an icon on the corner of your PC screen. (It does not even look like Facebook so if your boss were to come in well . . . . . .)

The best part for me is Facebook chat, it allows me to see who is online, and to actually chat with them, as long as you are logged on to chat on Facebook all your friends will see you as online. No wonder people say I never get off Facebook. So basically I have Facebook email and chat all in one tiny little application.

If you are into social networking this could be your thing. Did I mention that you need to log in only once so whenever you boot your machine it connects automatically to all these services?

I have used other Facebook & Twitter clients & multiprotocol instant messaging apps but for me, Digsby stands out!

The second option I liked is a browser that’s been around for a while but to be honest I only tried it recently and I loved it. It’s called Flock; it’s based on Chromium, the same platform that Google Chrome is based on. Well the whole idea behind Flock is to create a social browser that once you are logged on there no need to log on again when opening other sites like email and Facebook. It has this great sidebar that shows you your Facebook wall. I loved this browser! Download it and try it out. I will examine Flock in detail if I when we look at browsers in future.