Webware

The new Seesmic Desktop app lets Facebook fan page managers update them in sync with Twitter.

(Credit: Loic Le Meur / Seesmic)

There are a handful of Twitter apps out there that can also update Facebook statuses, and no clear market leader, but the new build (version 0.6) of Seesmic Desktop may soon be the app of choice for marketers who use Twitter and Facebook for brand promotion. That's because it can now manage activity on Facebook's "fan pages" as well as personal profiles, meaning that the operators of these pages can update them in sync with Twitter accounts.

"With the Facebook Page feature, you have greater control on how you market your business, oversee your brand, listen to your fans and build your community," a release from Seesmic explained. Facebook, it should be noted, has launched its own feature to push fan page updates directly to Twitter.

If you're an ordinary Facebook user who doesn't manage any fan pages, Seesmic Desktop can also track status posts from those that you subscribe to.

Seesmic Desktop was built after parent company Seesmic, which had previously built a video-commenting company, acquired Twitter desktop app Twhirl.

Founder Loic Le Meur also announced that 2.5 million people have now downloaded Seesmic Desktop, and that Seesmic has partnered with Twitter image-sharing app Yfrog to be its default image provider. It's the second partnership deal for Yfrog in a month, having inked a deal with URL shortener Bitly a few weeks ago. That's probably disconcerting news for Yfrog rival Twitpic, once the unequivocal big player in Twitter image uploads.

Seesmic on Monday released an update that adds more minor features to the Twitter and Facebook desktop manager.

The cross-platform Adobe AIR app will now auto-complete Twitter usernames, a feature that competitor TweetDeck has offered for a while. Seesmic 0.5 also adds a home timeline configuration, so you can include or exclude replies, private messages, and search results from one column.

Other minor changes include maximizing and bringing to the front the Seesmic window when you click on the notification pop-up window, and optionally minimizing the program to the system tray in Windows. The full list of changes can be read here.

There's a new version of the Tweetdeck Twitter client, 0.26, launching tonight, following the earlier release today of a preview of Seesmic Desktop 0.3. Both updated Twitter clients look like significant improvements from their previous versions. Tweetdeck is also getting an iPhone app.

Tweetdeck 0.26

The big new features on the Tweetdeck side are synchronization and multiple account support. The sync feature means that users who have Tweetdeck on multiple computers won't have to re-create their groups and search queries on each computer. They'll log in, instead, to a new Tweetdeck account, and their Tweetdeck client will automatically download the saved data from whatever installation of Tweetdeck they last ran.

Tweetdeck is also getting multiple account support. The lack of that has become a greater issue for Tweetdeck as more marketers and Twitter power users experiment with different online personas. The client continues to support Facebook, 12Seconds, and a few other networks. It also gets support for viewing Qik videos in the client itself, and for replying to them.

Tweetdeck won't store Twitter passwords in on its servers, but other than that, the sync feature will also replicate users' account settings across installations.

The sync feature will also connect to the new iPhone app. You'll be able to swipe to change columns, and the client will ready your saved searches and groups from your desktop Tweetdeck installations. The iPhone app has been in limbo in the Apple approval process for about 10 days, Tweetdeck creator Iain Dodsworth tells me, but he hopes to see it released to the app store soon. Kevin Rose got a preview.

Also coming in Tweetdeck: a new column for Tweetdeck newbies that highlights Twitter accounts recommended by Tweetdeck staff. Like Twitter's own recommended accounts list, it could help new users get started in the network, and make a big difference for the Twitterers who get a place in the column. Dodsworth is aware that there are issues around fairness and transparency on the Twitter default list, and he says he's open to experimenting with it. "If people flood us with [financial] offers to include them, then that may be the next test," he told me.

My take, based on a conversation with Dodsworth but no actual hands-on experience with either of the new Tweetdeck apps: The sync feature is key to locking users into the client, since it increases the value of each installation of the app for busy, multi-machine users, and by that I mean anyone with a computer and an iPhone. Dodsworth likes lock-in, as any smart CEO would. His vision for Tweetdeck is that, "It's a platform. It's a browser for the real-time Web."

I'm a multi-computer Tweetdeck user and am looking forward to trying this new version. It should be available tonight, 9 p.m. Pacific Time.

Seesmic Desktop 0.3

Tweetdeck challenger Seesmic Desktop is now in its 0.3 version. A younger app, this client is showing more differences between versions than Tweetdeck, and it's getting markedly better in each. Seesmic has also supported multiple Twitter accounts for longer than Tweetdeck, and the new client makes short work of posting a tweet to one Twitter account or to several, or to Facebook as well. There's also a nice tweet entry box that automatically shrinks unless you're typing in it. That's a nice space-saver that makes up, in a small way, for the way the client still hogs the left-most pane of the app with a list of accounts, groups, and saved searches. While that part of the interface is clear and useful, when I'm on a small laptop I do wish I could get it back for content.

Facebook users will find more features for them as well, including support for adding comments to friends' updates and a quick way to "like" posts.

Seesmic Desktop lets you participate more fully in Facebook.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

Seesmic now also includes support for personal Bit.ly accounts. Almost all Twitter clients, including Tweetdeck, let you post short URLs using Bit.ly, but Seesmic Desktop is the only I know that will access your personal account on the service, from which you can see stats on all the short URLs you've created.

Version 0.3 also fixes bugs, like the previous version's tendency to want to reply to a Twitter post with a Facebook message, and is generally slicker and more enjoyable to use.

The Seesmic Desktop 0.3 version I tried is a "release candidate" and can be downloaded directly here. Existing users' installations of Seesmic Desktop will not auto-update to this version until later in the week, Seemsic CEO Loic LeMeur told me.

Which one?

Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop are both freaking great Twitter clients. Seesmic appears to have a bit more horsepower for dealing with multiple accounts and Facebook, but I still find Tweetdeck's single-account Twitter experience slightly more enjoyable. If Tweetdeck delivers on the synced multi-computer support tonight, and the iPhone support ends up being is as good as I'm hearing, it will make it very difficult for the mainstream Twitter user to move off of it.

Both developers continue to update their apps, though. So this battle is far from over.

Loic Le Meur, the CEO of Seesmic, was beginning to get on my case whenever I posted a Twitter update from my default Twitter desktop app, TweetDeck, instead of from his new app, Seesmic Desktop. So I headed over to his office to see why this mattered so much to him.

Seesmic Desktop, as we've written previously, is the successor to the popular Twitter/Friendfeed client Twhirl. It looks like it will be very competitive to TweetDeck soon, although it has a few UI glitches at the moment.

Loic Le Meur launches Seesmic Desktop, April 7, 2009.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

This app is a critical but early piece of Seesmic's new strategy. While initially Seesmic was built around its short social video sharing service of the same name, after Le Meur bought Twhirl and saw that app get more traction than Seesmic itself, he realized, he told me, that his business lay not in building a new community of people sharing videos, but rather in enabling users to participate in any community they want to.

That's why Seesmic Desktop enables users to communicate with their Twitter and Facebook friends (with more services to come), why it integrates the incoming streams from services together, and why it will eventually integrate a number of different ancillary services, like URL shorteners, picture-sharing services, and, of course, the Seesmic video-sharing service.

Le Meur believes that stream-based social networking in general--and Twitter in particular, of course--is changing the way not only that people connect to each other, but the way businesses and consumers connect. And that's critical, because when you help out business, you can make money.

Customer service via Twitter

There's a paid version of Seesmic Desktop coming, Le Meur told me. Like CoTweet and HootSuite, it will make it easier for teams of people to manage a Twitter account and communicate with people who are either discussing the company they work for or who are contacting the company to complain or get help. There will probably be "pro" and "enterprise" versions of the app, in addition to the free version, Le Meur said, although we did not discuss the differences between the two paid products.

Another way Seesmic will make money: By selling prominent placement for tools like URL shorteners. Right now, for example, the popular Bit.ly URL shortener is at the top of the list of options when you want to create short URL in Seesmic. That's a premier position. Once (and if) Seesmic gets enough users, that position will be worth something, Le Meur says. Likewise shortcuts to picture positing service and possibly even additions to the Seesmic search box.

As the social services continue to converge on the stream-of-updates model, and as they interconnect, services that tie them all together become more valuable. Le Meur gets that the app that the people use to work with their social networks is the clearing station for a lot of value.

LeMeur is also working on an antispam service for Twitter (and not a moment too soon, if you ask me), as he discussed in his blog.

More new Seesmics

Other changes coming to the Seesmic product line include a Web-based version, called Seesmic Web, which should be released in about a month. I got a brief glimpse of this app on a developer's workstation. Its real advantage is that by being a Web-based app, it can do things that the desktop version cannot. Primarily, it acts as a persistent social hub for users, and can do things like continuously track searches for you (to send you alerts when you're not using the app). It will also be able synchronize all your settings, like your "userlists" (groups of users) to your other Seesmic software apps, including an upcoming revised version of Seesmic Desktop and the company's first iPhone app, which is in development.

The goal is to make Seesmic the gateway to all your social services, no matter what platform you're on at any moment. If you want to work solely from the Web, if you prefer local apps, or if you're mobile, Le Meur wants to make sure that your community, however or wherever you've set it up, is there for you. (It's a similar model to Evernote, a note-taking app and service that synchronizes your data between its software versions, Web site, and mobile version.)

Le Meur has a way to go before his vision begins to work as a business, but the direction is sound. He's going for the gate position in social networks, and he's not planning on relying on any one given network (like Twitter) to be his lifeline. Of course there will be competitors, and and it's too early to say if the execution will live up to the vision. But his is a mature view of how to make money as all the social platforms converge on the Twitter model.

Popular desktop Twitter client Twhirl has a new sibling. Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur, who acquired the Adobe AIR-based application about a year ago, has dubbed the new service "Seesmic Desktop," which is being launched in preview as a separate product from Twhirl.

Some of the new features include the capability to monitor multiple feeds side-by-side in a similar fashion to TweetDeck, create custom user lists, and post from multiple accounts while the application keeps track of which ones are which to keep duplicates at bay. You can also drag and drop photos from your computer to post straight to Twitter, making use of the fact that it's running off of Adobe's AIR platform.

However, not all of this functionality will be available from the get-go. The service is being launched in "preview" and will support only Twitter, however Le Meur said his team is on track to release support for other services in about a month. He also said that there's a pro version on the way that should fill in the company's business model, since this version--just like Twhirl, will not contain advertising.

One thing is clear though--Twhirl's life cycle may be at an end. While Le Meur said that development will continue on it, that could simply mean bug fixes. Considering Seesmic Desktop is launching as a Twitter client from the get-go should tell you something.

Seesmic Desktop preview is available for download right now, although you've got to sign up to be a member of "Team Seesmic," the company's new community site.

You can catch the whole live blog after the break.

The new Seesmic Desktop is kind of like the old Twhirl, meets Tweetdeck--with a dash of iTunes.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

A lot is happening on Facebook. Not only are your friends telling the world what's going on in their lives, but the social network itself is changing. It's more open now than before, thanks to the Facebook Connect program, and there are several good products that let you see Facebook data in new ways. You don't have to use Facebook.com to use Facebook anymore. Here are some of the best desktop applications.

The newbies: AIR apps

Seesmic for Facebook
An Adobe AIR app, Seesmic for Facebook (news) uses Facebook Connect to let you update your status and view friend status updates without surfing to the Facebook site. It's in beta testing, but it works as advertised: updating status is quick and easy, and whenever a friend updates their own status, it's there for me to see. It's a little buggy, but it was just released.

TweetDeck
TweetDeck is one of the most popular Twitter desktop clients, and now the app's developers are vying for Facebook dominance too. The upcoming version of TweetDeck lets you send a message just to Twitter, just to Facebook, or to both simultaneously. Once installed, the new version also includes a column displaying friends' status updates, and it offers the ability to chat with them via Facebook chat directly. The app isn't available to everyone just yet, but its public release is right around the corner.

Windows Apps

Facebook Desktop
A Windows-only app, Facebook Desktop provides real-time updates, lets you see wall posts, view messages, and read friend requests. It's one of the best-looking apps, too.

Facebook Photo Uploader
The folks at the Google Code Base have a neat little desktop app for Windows users that allows them to upload photos directly to Facebook and tag them before they get to the service. It's not the best-looking app, and it's a little buggy, but I'm impressed by its ease of use.

Lightweight and unobtrusive makes Tray a great app.

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook Tray Notify
Sometimes, a desktop client just gets in the way. If you feel that way, turn to Facebook TrayNotify. It's a lightweight app that sits in your taskbar awaiting Facebook notifications. Once it receives them, alerts pop up, letting you know about the updates. If you want to act on them, you'll need to go to the Facebook site to do so.

FBLook
FBLook is useful, if you're an Outlook user. Besides filling you in on friends' status updates, you can update your own Facebook status, and see notifications and requests without going to the Facebook Web site--it all works within Outlook on your desktop. Although I'm running a Mac every day, I still use FBLook whenever I run my Windows machine. In fact, it's one of the first apps I fire up.

FBQuick
If you're looking for a nicely designed app that will work on your Windows PC and give you some of the best functionality around, look at FBQuick. The app sends you profile notifications, including tagged photos, pokes, and messages, but it doesn't allow you to update anything while on your desktop.

Fonebook
If you're an Outlook user, and you have a mobile phone that supports Outlook, check out the Fonebook app. Once installed on your desktop, the app will transfer your contacts and photos from Facebook to Outlook. The app copies a contact's photo, Facebook profile URL, the "About me" details, and status. That can then be synced with an Outlook-compatible phone so whenever someone calls, the person's picture and information will pop up on your mobile-phone screen.

Mac Apps

Dashboard Widget
Dashboard Widget gives you Facebook on your OS X Dashboard. It will display messages, pokes, friend requests, group invites, and other notifications. It updates whenever new notifications filter in.

Exporter for iPhoto couldn't be easier to use.

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook Exporter for iPhoto
If you want to upload photos into Facebook, and you don't want to waste your time firing up Safari, use the Facebook Exporter for iPhoto. It's the best photo-uploading service for Macs. It allows you to find photos in iPhoto, tag them with your friends' names, add captions, and upload them as an album to your profile. It's incredibly easy to use.

FacebookSync
If you're an Address Book user, FacebookSync will automatically sync information from Facebook into your Apple Address Book. The service finds matches in your friends list and adds all their information, including name, address, phone number, and other data to your Address Book. It even adds their photos to the app.

Facile
If you simply want to update your status update or view all your friends' status updates, Facile for the Mac is a nice way to do it. It provides a simple interface showing your friends' profile pictures and latest status updates, and allows you to input your own updates above the list (it's a lot like Seesmic for Facebook).

FriendSaver
This is a Facebook screensaver. It finds your friends tagged in photos and starts displaying those in succession while your Mac is dormant. And if you want to take some friends out of the queue, you can filter them out with a simple click. Or just display your male or female friends.

PhotoBook
A Facebook photo browser for your Mac, PhotoBook allows you to manage, share, and view your friends' Facebook photos without ever going to their profile pages. All the photos are available on a single page, and they can be viewed by tags or in a slideshow. Every photo or album can be downloaded into iPhoto.

The others

Bloom makes it easy to add images.

(Credit: Facebook)

Bloom
Bloom, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, allows you to upload photos, download other albums, and view your friends' photos without surfing to Facebook pages. A recent update allows you to add captions to images, rotate them before you upload, and tag different people. It has a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Drag-and-Drop Uploader
If you don't want all the extras that Bloom provides, Drag-and-Drop Uploader (for Windows) makes it simple to add images to your Facebook profile. The service is lightweight, and in a matter of seconds, you can drag photos from your desktop and add them to the app, which will then be uploaded into albums in your profile.

DeskBook
The Windows app DeskBook allows you to access Facebook features and information without accessing your profile page. Regardless of whether you want to see how many notes you've received, how many friend requests you've ignored, or if you want to just search for friends, DeskBook does it all. It even lets you accept or reject group and event invitations, as well as friend requests. It's my go-to app when I want to get the full Facebook experience without going to my profile page.

Facedesk
There's not much to Facedesk, but that is its appeal. The app can be downloaded to your desktop, and it runs Facebook directly in the app instead of your browser. Yes, it acts like a browser, but it runs only Facebook, so you won't be able to open any other sites. It's Facebook for people who care about nothing else in the world.

Flair
Flair's functionality won't blow you away--it's a notification app that lets you know when a friend wants to add you, or you receive a poke--but it does that in a lightweight bundle that doesn't hog resources, and it offers one of the best designs of any app in this roundup. It's not unique, but it sure is pretty.

Zebr
AIR app Zebr allows you to update your status without going to your profile page, and it keeps track of your friends' status automatically.

Two services I use, Twhirl and Ping.fm, and one I don't, Seesmic, are getting integrated this week in ways that will likely help all of the products.

First up, Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur just announced that the multi-posting tool Ping.fm now supports Seesmic, a video microblog service. Seesmic has a new API, which has made it possible for the Ping.fm team to allow embed a recording function for Seesmic videos within Ping.fm. It's very simple to use the Ping.fm service now to create a Seesmic video, but the real benefit is that you can then easily post a link to the video on another micro-blog or social site, like Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, or Plurk (or any combination of them), without visiting any of the sites themselves.

You can now record Seesmic videos within Ping.fm, but what I'm really looking forward to is the capability to post to Ping.fm from within Twhirl.

The AIR app Twhirl, primarily known as a Twitter client (although it also supports Seesmic and Friendfeed) is also getting related new features that should be released later this week. Taking advantage of the same Seesmic API that Ping.fm is using, the client will soon let you record Seesmic videos directly. The current version lets you watch, but not record, Seesmic vids.

Also coming to Twhirl in the upcoming release is support for Ping.fm: You'll be able to use the client as a front-end to your Ping.fm account, which means if you like the Ping.fm service (like I do) for its capability to multi-post items to several services at once, and also like the Twhirl service for reading your microblog feeds, soon you'll be able to take advantage of the Ping.fm functionality without actually leaving the Twhirl client.

Together, these three services make for a nice system for microbloggers, and the set-up makes it much more likely that a user of any two of the products will take up use of the third. I may just start using Seesmic, for example. I would like to see more interface and login integration between the services (you have to have accounts on all three to use them as I described), but for now, this is a very welcome improvement to them all.

Previously: The looming crisis: Personal syndication overload.

Loic Le Meur, CEO and founder of video community service Seesmic, announced publicly on Friday that the company is laying off seven people from the start-up. Citing "market conditions and the recession," Le Meur disclosed that most of the let-go staffers are "behind-the-scenes" people who were building out the service. Le Meur said, "The worst is, we love them all."

He says that "Seesmic is moving on and will continue to innovate and provide a stable platform." The company has "years ahead" of funding to keep things moving, he said.

Seesmic also owns the Twitter and Friendfeed client Twhirl.

Le Meur's style of announcing this change in his company is unusually open, but it is likely the beginning of a series of similar announcements, some more public than others, about restructuring and retrenchment in start-ups. The founder of a different four-person company, whom I met with Friday, told me he had just cut salaries at his company in order to stretch the company's "runway" of survivability on the money it currently has in the bank.

See Le Meur's confessional video on the topic, below:

Tough times. Tough decisions.also read my blog post http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/10/tough-times-tou.html

The next update of Twhirl will get support for yet another nanoblogging service, Identi.ca, and on that platform Twhirl will feature a communication method that Twitter users have been asking for: push updates.

Read to end of story for the download link and instructions.

In other words, the Twhirl client won't have to ping the Identi.ca servers to get updates; instead, updates will be sent directly to the Twhirl client. This makes nanoblog conversations more live--you can have a back-and-forth without hovering over the "update" button. It also means that your Twhirl client doesn't have to be hitting the Identi.ca servers every few minutes for updates, which reduces the load profile on the service, theoretically at least.

The latest version of Twhirl gets push nanoblog entries from Identi.ca.

In practice, the push capability of Identi.ca is more complex. Identi.ca doesn't do the pushing itself. Instead, Identi.ca sends its updates to Google Talk, a Jabber-based IM platform that supports the open XMPP standard for instant messaging; and it's those XMPP messages that get pushed out to the Twhirl desktop clients installed on users' computers.

The two-step requires users have two logins: One for Identi.ca, and one for Gtalk, and that they enter them into both Identi.ca and Twhirl.

It's unknown when (or even if) Twitter will open up a push interface or unlock its XMPP support, or how Twitter and Twhirl will work together to make setup easier than it is for Identi.ca.

Twitter does support the XMPP standard for sending out the "fire hose" of its content, but it's not open. Only four sites right now get the feed: Summize, which Twitter bought, Twittervision, FriendFeed, and Zappos (yes, the shoe company).

Identi.ca, by the way, is cool because it's open-source. But other than that I find little reason to use the service: it doesn't have Twitter's user network nor newbie Plurk's user interface innovation. Seeing Identi.ca updates pushed to Twhirl just raises the obvious question: When will we get this feature on Twitter?

The new version of Twhirl will probably be announced Monday, Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur told me.

You need both an Identi.ca and a GTalk ID to get the push feature to work.

How to
To get the version of Twhirl that supports Identi.ca, grab this download. Log in to the Identi.ca site, go to the IM tab and enter in your Gtalk ID. Also check the "Send me notices through Jabber/Gtalk..." box in Preferences. In Twhirl, go to the configuration panel for Identi.ca, go to the Network tab, and in the "XMPP Settings" box, enter your Gtalk ID and password, and "talk.google.com" in the server field. You'll know it's working if you see a little lightbulb icon in the lower-right of the Identi.ca panel light up.

You can follow me on Identi.ca, but I hang out more on Twitter and Friendfeed.

Related:
How I got burned by Twitter's API, and how to fix it.
Which way will Twitter go? by Dave Winer.