credit: CATR

Twitter is now all the rage. Your friends are doing it. Your mom is doing it. Even educated fleas are doing it. Microblogging is here to stay, and it’s caught on in a big way. According to Wikipedia, there are over 111 different ways to let everyone know what you had for breakfast online! Now the question is – how do we update them all at the same time?

There’s no doubt that RSS has made checking up on web content infinitely easier with its ability to bring websites to you, rather than you having to go to each site and see what’s new. Why shouldn’t we have a way to do that with status updates? No one wants to have to open MySpace, Facebook, and all the countless other social networking sites that are now on the “what are you doing” updating bandwagon one at a time. So let’s look at a few of the ways that make that simultaneous status updating a whole lot easier.

Hellotxt is a web-based solution that allows you to update your status on all the major players – Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and others. It retains your login info – even without creating an account which is a nice feature. The confirmation and sign-up process could use some work. Once I submitted my update, I was unsure if it had processed unless I manually checked the sites to see if they had changed. There wasn’t a clear “success” indication on Hellotxt’s interface. Also during sign-up, every username I tried said they were unavailable, so I entered one anyway and it went through. But I can give them some slack since they are still self-branded as being still in beta. They also offer a mobile version for registered users, and a Facebook app to make your updates while perusing there, if you’re so inclined.

Minggl is a new toolbar that collects all of your social networks into one easy-to-use place – the top of your browser, wherever you are online. While keeping tabs on all of your friends in the sidebar, it also has the ability to update your Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook statuses all at the same time. In case you don’t want want your personal status showing up on a professional network, like LinkedIn, you’re free to customize which ones you prefer. This works currently in Firefox on the PC and Mac, and Internet Explorer. They plan to support many other networks in the near future, such as Bebo and Orkut.

Digsby is a new instant messaging client that has been widely acclaimed for its ability to hook into social networking better than the other IM aggregators like Trillian, Adium, or Pidgin. In addition to keeping tabs on your IM contacts, Digsby lets you access your Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook accounts, and quickly update your Facebook status, and post a new tweet right from your system tray. MySpace updating isn’t supported yet, and there currently isn’t a way to update them all at the same time, but it’s remarkably fast access to all of your accounts, similar to Minggl. The real draw for Digsby is the potential to have a single status update for not only your social network accounts, but also all of your IM accounts. So you could imagine having a single place to update your status at AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber, in addition to Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook.

If you’re only in need of Twitter and Facebook, TwitterSync will allow you to make your normal updates to Twitter, which will automagically push your status to Facebook as well. The main difference between TwitterSync and the official Twitter Facebook app is that it won’t prepend “is twittering” on your Facebook status.

So what’s the verdict?

For the time being, Hellotxt reigns supreme with their ease of use and widespread compatibility with all major social networks. Minggl comes in second with its fast from-the-browser status updating. In time, perhaps Digsby will follow suit and include simultaneous updating for all of your social networks, as well as your status in every IM account.

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