Fresh out of silicon valley comes Spokeo, a remarkable attempt at merging the frustrating proliferation of social networks and services into one. Spokeo applies the concept of tributary merging to social networks, blogs, photo and video systems, and RSS feeds aggregating content in one location allowing you to keep up with friends, favorite blogs, and peers through one interface.Just launched, Spokeo currently supports social networks Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, Wretch, Xanga; blog, photo, and miscellaneous sites Blogger, DeviantArt, Digg, Flickr, Fotolog, ImageStation, LiveJournal, PhotoBucket, PictureTrail, Piczo, WebShots, Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo Video, YouTube.
Simply put, Spokeo distills content from noisy profiles and aggregates them onto one scrollable page. Spokeo is useful for monitoring friends on, say, Facebook alone or every network to which you belong. Think of it as an RSS reader evolved for the multimedia content of social systems.
The user experience still needs some work and its hard to figure out how to easily add your friends from different networks but once you’ve got the hang of it you’ll find Spokeo a wonderful service saving you time and helping prevent you from neglecting friends on those rarely visited networks. I give Spokeo every benefit of the doubt in this early release and even forgive them for overlooking LinkedIn and Yahoo! 360. (Though I can’t wait for them to get Blogger working!)
The implication for marketers is tremendous. I, for one, rarely visit each of the sites where my peers have signed up; I don’t have the time or desire to visit each network to keep up with the dozen friends there so Flickr and my RSS reader (netvibes) are my only regular destinations. I lose touch with people. Spokeo creates a value to which I’m interested in returning to keep up with RSS and blogs, photos, and friends. With the eyes go the dollars.
Good luck to them and be sure to look me up on Spokeo (paul_l_obrien)
