Hey everyone…we’re currently down for just a bit longer while we prep our feature release. We’re hoping to be back up sometime shortly…

Me. My name is Brian Burns. I’m here as the newest (albeit minor member) of the Socialthing! team… helping them out with their blog. The idea is that, well, they’re busy. They’re busy pumping out new updates, and busy doing all the crazy things startups have to do at the tail end of private beta. The blog is nice, and it’s filled with helpful updates and tips. But it doesn’t have a lot of personality. It doesn’t talk about what Socialthing! really is, and it doesn’t talk about who the people behind it really are.

And that’s too bad. It’s too bad because Socialthing! is a cool product, and there are some cool people working on it. It’s exciting stuff, and they’re exciting people. It deserves more attention, and they deserve more pub. I’ll do my best to give both their due.

So… stay tuned here to see some good stuff. Some good stuff about why Socialthing! exists, and why Socialthing! rocks (because it does). In the meantime, make sure you’re following Socialthing! on twitter (@socialthing), and if you aren’t already, make sure you’re following me on twitter (@brianlburns).

See you around!

Hey everyone…just wanted to let you know that we’ve put @replies and Directs back into Socialthing! Head over to the “Settings” page, then navigate to your Twitter account and click “Settings”. The options should be right there…

We’re for sure excited to have this functionality back in, as it was one of our favorite features before 2.0. Hope you enjoy it!

Hey everyone…we just put up a new update that includes a few new services and a few new features…

New services:

Brightkite - A really awesome service where you share your location with your friends. Our integration means that you’ll be able to see what your friends are posting, where they’re checking in, and the notes they’re writing. Soon you’ll be able to post to Brightkite, as well as post comments on items.

Plurk - All the rage with the Twitterati, Plurk is a service that adds a few new flavors to the microblogging genre. Horizontal timeline scrolling, emotions, etc. are just a few of the niceties about it. As soon as Plurk offers an API, we’ll be able to post new Plurk messages back and view friends Plurks. Until then, we hope you at least enjoy publishing your Plurk status in your personal profile!

Seesmic - With a CEO like Loic LeMeur how could your service not be the bees knees? Seesmic is like Twitter, but for video…post a short video and create a conversation around it! Seesmic’s integration means that we can show you all of your friends’ stuff (even their private replies) and publish your own videos on your profile too. You can even reply to other videos right within their player!

Guitar Hero - Alright, I’ve been excited about this one forever. It’s easy…just integrate your console (XBOX360, PS3 or Wii) into the Guitar Hero site, then tell us your User ID and we’ll publish how well you’ve been doing lately on your tunes. Stats include star rating, percentage, oh, and what song you played in the first place. This has been a lot of fun to test internally (IE …just playing a lot of Guitar Hero under the guise of work).

New features:

We’ve added a few new keyboard shortcuts:
M - Me (your profile)
J - Previous tab
K - Next tab
C - Close current tab

There’s a new indication whenever you’re looking at new items versus stuff you may have seen before. Basically we add a yellow background color to “new” stuff. But this is a work in progress…meaning please tell us if you don’t like it…and give us a better idea!

We’ve changed around the Services page just a bit. We’ve now added icons indicating what kinds of things we do with the various accounts you’re adding. If you see then that means we’ll probably be bringing in YOUR activities. If you see then we’ve got your friends’ updates and last, means that you’re going to be able to post stuff to that service. In addition to this, we’re also clarifying any time that we’re needing to ask for your password. Definitely not something we want to do, but it’s a necessary thing for some parts of our app to work.

We really hope you like all the new additions, and very soon we’ll be adding all kinds of new stuff…new services, features, etc!

Hey everyone. We spent this entire week doing a whole bunch of optimizations and tweaks on our back end so that the platform is more stable and works quicker. We’ll be continuing to do optimizations in the coming weeks to be able to deliver updates faster, etc.

But since we’re committed to bringing you all kinds of new updates, we threw in something that makes Socialthing! work just a bit more like a desktop app: Keyboard Shortcuts.

It’s pretty simple…the idea was that you can navigate through Socialthing! without your mouse…or at least navigate a good amount of it. Basically when you have ST! open, you just hit the corresponding key on your keyboard. So without further adieu, here they are:

H - Home
P - Post
S - Settings
V - Vote

If our auto-update notification pops up to tell you that you have new updates from some networks, you can hit “E” and that will activate the “See them”

If you have the Post window open (like if you clicked on it, or hit P to bring it open), you can hit ESC and it will close that window. (NOTE: This feature doesn’t work in Safari if you’re typing something in the text box, if you want to close, type Tab then ESC)

Also, when you have the post window open, you’re able to use Tab to go straight to the “Post” button, so that you can click Tab then Enter after you’re done typing, and post something right up. If you want to select or deselect any networks that you’re posting to, you can just keep hitting Tab, then Space to check/uncheck the boxes. (NOTE: If you’re trying to do this in Safari on the Mac, you’ll need to go to System Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse, Keyboard Shortcuts and then at the bottom, make sure “All Controls” is selected).

We’ve got a few more keyboard shortcuts that we’ll be adding in next week, along with some very exciting features, so stay tuned!