Outlook is Losing, “Lifestreaming” is Winning, But We Still Need Organization

As I’ve become more involved in researching and participating in social media, it has become apparent that nobody has “cracked the code” on a productivity tool that would manage all of the different social media outlets (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs). In other words, I want one place to go so I can connect to all of these outlets at once, without having to log into each separately. I’m test-driving Seesmic desktop right now. It’s got a pretty decent interface, but seems prejudiced to only Facebook and Twitter (two SM biggies, I admit). Also, it doesn’t allow me to see private replies on Facebook, nor manage who I’m following on Twitter. I like that it runs on Adobe’s AIR platform and is therefore not web-based, but it still offers a limited menu in terms of which sites I can manage.

As to “social web browsers,” there’s FriendFeed, Flock and Streamy. I’m going to give them a whirl.

What’s interesting though is that despite my downloading a 85 megabyte update to Microsoft Outlook this past weekend (rendering no apparent change in the UI), there’s still not a peep from the king of “productivity software.” I did find TwInbox add-in for managing Twitter as an Outlook folder, but it has some quirks with the toolbar placement in Outlook.

The old paradigm of private communication through email, while not going away, is being augmented (and for some supplanted) by “lifestreaming” … an ongoing feed of communications through various networks that allows publication of “what’s going on” to the world, not just a single person on the other end of an email address. The good thing about email is there’s one point of contact, my email address, versus the many that have emerged with social media.

Whoever can get their hands around managing multiple social media outlets is going to be the winner.