So I want to clarify a ton of things in wake of the TechCrunch post.
1. Socialthing! is not FriendFeed, and FriendFeed is not Socialthing!
This one is a question we always get: How are you different from FriendFeed? And how do we respond? Usually with one common answer: We have very different value propositions, and right now are being compared to each other because of a surface understanding of what we do. Socialthing! is and always has been about making your digital life easier. We bring your friends into one interface, make it easy to post stuff back to the networks, and just in general, try to make social networking easier. FriendFeed is about creating an interesting conversation around content (at least that’s our take on it). Two very different, very equally as cool value props. To us, the idea behind FriendFeed is not dissimilar to a forum. With forums, you have threads and then replies to those threads. With FriendFeed, the threads would be user generated content and replies being the comments and “likes” around that content.
2. We ask you for passwords because rather than just grabbing feeds, we are working with the various APIs that exist. This is beneficial because then it allows us to aggregate things that feeds otherwise wouldn’t provide: private data, friend lists, etc. When you sign up for Socialthing! you may notice a different experience signing in to your del.icio.us versus your Facebook account. This is because Facebook’s API allows for what is called token-based authentication. To put it easy, when you want to use Socialthing!, Facebook gives us a “secret token” that allows us to work with the data in your account, without you having to give us your username and password.
This is something that we whole-heartedly believe in. We’re working hard on encouraging the services that we’ve implemented to at least explore the possibility of using token-based authentication (including OAuth, a project led by a few friends of ours). Soon, one of our engineers will be writing a post as to the security of the passwords that you’re entering into our service.
3. Roadmap
We have an unbelievable amount of stuff planned for this thing. If you can imagine a single place that you can go to where you manage all of your accounts, the content, your friendships, etc…this is our goal. Right now, we knowingly have a slightly more limited feature and services set. But for good reason.
First off, we want to have a great user experience. This is why services like Tumblr and Jaiku aren’t in there is because of the issue with duplication. If you’re following the same person on Tumblr as you are on Twitter, and they happen to have their Twitter posting to their Tumblr (I know, pretty confusing right?), then it can create duplicate content. As a user, if you saw the same exact update in two different places from two different services, would it be confusing? Would it be annoying? These are questions we thought long and hard about and that’s why we took the route we did. We are working on the de-duplication of services like this and will have them to you as soon as possible.
Secondly, we’re working hard on new ways of connecting you to friends you’ve already got. For instance, coming (very) soon is the ability to see the things your friends are doing, even if you’re not a part of that service. The idea is that if you’re a friend with someone on Twitter, and they have their settings such that “friends on any service” can see their various updates, then you might see their Digg stories, even if you’re not a part of Digg.
Really, to sum it all up, we know that the number of our services is lacking, and is behind that of our “competitors”, but that’s changing very soon. We’ll be integrating a good number of services very quickly here…
Ok, so as a side note…I am posting this at 5:50am Central Time in Austin, TX during the amazing SXSW Interactive Festival. We got home from our big party about an hour ago…great time with a lot of great people… Totally stoked about that. AND really happy to see some great feedback coming through (at the party, through comments on TechCrunch, Satisfaction, etc.). Expect more updates from SXSW. Until then, hope you enjoy Socialthing!
PS. Please please please give us all of your feedback. http://getsatisfaction.com/socialthing or email us at feedback AT socialthing DOT com
