It's beginning to look like 2008 might be the year of the social aggregator as users begin to employ these emerging new tools to better manage and track their various online relationships, both personal and professional. The introduction of these new Web applications, such as Friendfeed, Socialthing!, Spokeo, Second Brain, and Iminta, are making it easy for users to keep track of what their friends are doing online while simultaneously demonstrating that there are compelling alternatives to being social online without having to, say, actively maintain a Facebook account. In fact, that's the very premise of this new type of social Web utility, which automatically tracks a user's public activity at sites around the Web including blogs, Flickr, Twitter, del.icio.us and so on, and creates a single convenient feed for others to consume and track.
I've been evaluating a number of these applications over the last few weeks and so far Friendfeed seems to be one of the best offerings in this space and also supports one of the widest array of online services, with Socialthing a close second. Friendfeed currently monitors and aggregates one's social activity on 28 different services at the time of this writing, putting the result into one clean activity stream with a matching Atom feed. While the latency on some of the services Friendfeed tracks isn't always great -- del.icio.us bookmarks seem to take a good long while to show up for example -- the integration ranges from the workable to the robust, with surprisingly good support for Twitter's hashtags for example. Services you also might not have previously considered aggregating socially are also offered by Friendfeed including your Gmail status message, Netflix rental queue, and your LinkedIn activity.
However, a quick examination of Alexa traffic charts (partial sample below) shows there are no clear leaders in this emerging space that will soon be crowded with competition, if it isn't already. Peter Cashmore at Mashable tracked at least 20 entries in this space mid-last year and so it's interesting to see how quickly Friendfeed has risen among the various players. Ease of use, visual elegance, and breadth of service tracking appears to be the competitive discriminator here, like it is with so many things in the Web 2.0 world.
This morning Duncan Riley at TechCrunch covered the best ways to track Web 2.0 and he omitted social aggregators as something users should be taking advantage of, while explicitly including things like TechMeme and blog readers. That's because social aggregators are far from being mainstream yet and the long term staying power of these individual Web applications aren't clear either, making it a challenge to decide where to "move in". But increasingly -- as Robert Scoble did this week -- I'm finding that I'm checking my Friendfeed stream and not Facebook or Techmeme as much as I used to, and I suspect many others will as well as they find aggregated social activity streams the fullest and most convenient picture of their social network. The egalitarian nature of social aggregators is also appealing at a time when many social networks are trying to put up as much of a walled garden as users will accept.
The wild cards for this space include major players such as Google or Facebook credibly adding social aggregation to their own offerings as well as a killer app mobile entry. Open social networking standards such as Open Friend Format will also make this space interesting in the medium to long term. Please tell us your favorite social aggregator below.
译文:
好友聚合器成为数码生活操盘手
看来2008将成为好友聚合器的舞台，用户们开始逐渐使用这种新生工具，以便更好的追踪他们在各个社会化站点上的相关信息，这些站点有的是私人网站，也有专业网站。这些网络工具的应用，比如
Friendfeed,
Socialthing!,
Spokeo,
Second Brain, and
Iminta，使用户能够轻松地跟踪到好友们网络上的行踪，同时提供了多种方式保持在网络上的社交化，而非不得不保持在Facebook上的活跃度。事实上这恰恰是这种新型网页社会化用途的前提。这又继而对用户在网络上的一系列活动展开跟踪，比如blogs, Flickr图片, Twitter, del.icio.us美味书签等等。最终创建一个简单便利的feed供别人使用和跟踪。
好友聚合器：
集中同步你的网络生活
过去的几个星期中，我对好几个类似的应用器作了评估，Friendfeed看来是这个领域中最出色的了，它支持许多各式各样的在线服务。紧接其后的是Socialthing。截止到这篇文章为止，Friendfeed同时可以追踪聚合到个人在28个不同网站享用的服务，组成一个清晰的活跃流加上与之相配的Atom feed。虽然并不是Friendfeed跟踪的所有服务都很有潜质—del.icio.us书签花了很久才崭露头角，总的来说这种聚合产生的结果从普通可行到表现非凡不等，它为
Twitter's hashtags提供了有力的支持。过去很难想象的好友聚合方式也在Friendfeed出现，这其中包括Gmail即时信息，Netflix租赁“长尾”，LinkedIn关系网活动。
然而，Alexa一项快速研究所得的交流量图标显示(以下为部分显示）在这个新生领域内，还没有哪个网站能算得上是真正的强者，但是竞争将会变得非常激烈，假如还没有非常激烈的话。Mashable的Peter Cashmore去年年中跟踪了这个领域至少20个条目，所以眼看着Friendfeed在众多对手中如此迅速的脱颖而出实在是一件很让人兴奋的事情。操作简单，外观优雅，跟踪服务种类繁多成为了竞争的分水岭，在Web2.0时代的其他领域，情况也是如此的。
今天早上TechCrunch的Duncan Riley讲述了跟踪Web 2.0的最佳方法，虽然他详细讲述了TechMeme和博客阅读器，但却略过了用户们应当善加利用的好友聚合器。这是因为好友聚合器现在还绝非主流，而这种独立网页应用程序的长期效应也不十分明显，怎样进入角色就成为了最大的挑战。不过，不同于以往的是，就像Robert Scobe本周在做的一样，我开始更多地关注我的Friendfeed活跃流，而不是Facebook或者Techmeme，我想许多人在发现聚合的好友活跃流能够为他们的社交网络提供如此全面便利的服务以后，他们也同样会有这样的转变。这种平等主义特性一度非常吸引人，因为只要用户能够接受，许多社交网只是建造一座被围墙包围的社交花园。
此领域的王牌还有一些主流商家，如Google或者Facebook，他们把好友聚合器纳入自己的供应范围，同时还推出了杀手软件手机目录业务。一些开放性的社会网络标准如
Open Friend Format 也将使此领域在中长期内增色不少。请留言告诉我们你最中意的好友聚合器。