Slick. Sexy. Simple. Even in its first iteration, Socialthing! has been drawing a heap of attention ever since its inception last March at SXSW, a music and media convention. Although the service has eliminated more functionality than it’s added in the three months its been around, everything’s about to change for the better in just a few hours when version 2.0 is officially unveiled.
Despite playing (arguably) second fiddle to FriendFeed for a while now, Socialthing!’s provided simple and easy-to-use aggregation services I’ve been unable to find anywhere else on the internet. The iPhone interface is a work of art, the lifestream is intuitive, and every square inch of the service is a joy to use– the Socialthing! team seems to really know what its doing, but yet they continue to improve upon their already-excellent design.
Writes Ross LaRocco, a 2.0 alpha tester,
“Socialthing! will have lots to offer in coming months, years, and years beyond… it’s just nice not to have to log into Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, etc. to see what friends are up to.”
Although many of the service’s incoming features are still speculative, we already know some of what what improvements will include, thanks to a few sneak-peeks courtesy of Socialthing!’s Twitter feed. Digg, de.licio.us, and last.fm are being added to the lifestream, and features such as auto-updating and social history caching are being integrated, too. Along with speed tweaks, future widgetizations, and more, the new iteration of this service is sure to please.
I’m personally excited, however, to hear that the team has gone to great lengths to provide an update that will be far from incremental. Writes Founder and Visionary Matt Galligan in a recent blog post:
“After we released Socialthing! at South by Southwest this year, we had quickly realized a few things that we wanted to change. We immediately started work on the next version, but the hardest part was realizing that it couldn’t be an incremental change, it was going to have to be a major revision. That’s why we’re calling it 2.0. The things that you’ve come to love are still there, our great UI, ease of use, etc. But a lot of the things that have had criticisms are changing. We’ve fixed a lot of things, added a ton of new features, and all in all, made a much better app.”
These are wise words. Kudos, Socialthing! I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to see 2.0 in all its glory. Good luck with the release!
Face it: in the digital age, your time is one of your most precious commodities. Never in the known history of the world has a culture needed to perceive, process, and act on information to the extent each and every one of us must today.
