So "aggregator" must be one of the most popular terms being thrown around the social web ring of late. There are plenty of start-ups entering this space (seemingly all at the same time), in fact the population of this new territory has grown so rapidly that Techcrunch create a hilarious joke site called FriendFeedFeed. All joking aside, there is no question that aggregation could be valuable, very valuable. Imagine all the time we could save if we didn't have to login to 16 different sites everyday. However, I have spent some time on these new sites and I am not convinced they have it figured out yet.
I appreciate the attempt, and long for the right solution, but I don't think it is out there yet. I see two main problems with the existing aggregators, most of which suffer from one or the other:
Creating even more noise
This includes the "news feed" style sites like friendfeed, twitter, iminta, and spokeo. These sites, especially friendfeed and twitter, have their useful place on the social web - but they don't simplify my life. In fact, I am worried they may be crating more noise than necessary. The sites provide you with a continuous feed of what your "friends" are doing on the web. However, if you follow any fairly active people, this feed can move quickly. If you aren't watching it constantly you could miss something, the last thing i need is a site I have to stare at constantly....
No/Limited Interaction
Most aggregators seem to suffer from this problem. Friendfeed allows me to interact with a particular feed post by making comments, or join a "room" - a.k.a. chat rooms 2.0. But I can't view email, messages from friends on social networks, etc. Friendfeed seems to be a pretty good service, which I do use, but it doesn't solve my management issues.
Other services like Fuser let me see new messages, and sometimes even reply (when the site is working), but I don't get updates when my friends do anything else like post a photo or make a blog entry. I can't even see any of my social friends unless they are on my Fuser "leader board." Fuser is basically a "dashboard" product for viewing email and social messages which runs slowly and requires me to leave the site and go login elsewhere if I want to interact with people. It's a good idea and a so-so attempt, but ultimately unsatisfying.
I am sure someone will get this right eventually, but who will it be?
Stumble It!
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