So, just like many people, I use Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook to communicate with many of my friends online. Some of my friends (the delicate female types) are on Facebook; while some of my friends (the clever and earnest blokes) are on Twitter. It’s hard to follow both.

Some people update both Twitter and Facebook (as do I). Some people call themselves different names on Twitter than they do on Facebook: and names that I’m not too familiar with. I’d quite like to rename them, to the names I know them by, and I’d also like to be able to have one update from them, not two. And, naturally, I’d like to have all these updates in one place. Ideally on my iPhone (when I’m out and about) as well as on my computer. Oh, and if I could actually update my status from here too, that would be good.

So, it’s a good job that socialthing! came along. In spite of the Yahoo! type! exclamation! mark!, this is a service which is quite excellent, and magically does exactly what I want it to do.

The screenshot on the right shows it in all its glory. My colleague Tristan Ferne (who’s not called that on Twitter) has updated both Twitter and Facebook; then there are a few updates from Neil McIntosh and Chris Parker (one on Facebook, one on Twitter), then Olly’s Facebook update with some of his Flickr photos, and finally a bit of Bill Thompson. (I’ve blurred the Facebook updates, since they’re for friends only, in case you wondered).

The secret in this service - I couldn’t really find any instructions - is to click the names of your friends, and start renaming them to names that you recognise. After you do this a few times, it’ll prompt you to combine ‘tristanf’ and ‘Tristan Ferne’, for example, into one person. That bit enables the magic grouping of updates that you see with Tristan and Olly.

The beauty is that I don’t need to send yet another ‘friend request’ out to my friends; this reads my friends from each service automatically. It’s a splendid service, and I’d heartily recommend it to you… if you could get in. Socialthing! is in private beta right now; on an invite basis only. Watch out for the invites (no, I have none), and try to get in - because, trust me, it really does ‘get your digital life together’, as they say.

It does make me wonder how other websites might use something similar to grab your friends without insisting on yet another ‘friend request’ being sent out; to let websites like Twitter and Facebook be “where you get together with your friends”, yet to allow other websites to use that data. “Three of your friends listened to The Now Show on Friday night”. Looks an interesting concept…

Photo: Matt Galligan. Used under licence.

Photo: snow in Sheringham, taken March 23rd by Adam Bowie. Used under licence

Socialthing! on the iPhone
How splendid. Hope I get more invites soon; it’s a really nice app.

New Virgin Radio homepage coming soon
Hidden in this blog posting, news that a new (and naturally 'beta') homepage comes this week from my old friends at Virgin. Looking forward to seeing it.

The LSE's Freetard fiasco - when creator-haters flock together
Of course, this is in The Register, and therefore is probably bollocks. But a great writeup of a typical music copyright meeting. [via John Naughton].

User experience at Google
Suppose I'd better watch this…

Stalkerfeed
My 'stalkerfeed', now I guess known as a friendfeed. Oh well, I missed another web meme. Anyway, this now contains output from 'wordie', my new favourite website.

Wordie
What a splendiferous site. "Like Flickr, but without the photos", it calls itself. Which is about right. There's nothing crapulent about this site; indeed, it’s quite cremulent. I've created two lists, linked from my homepage.

This is a tidied and edited list of my del.icio.us postings from March 21st to March 24th. You can subscribe to this list, live, via rss.