Refashioning Sharing Through Social Networking

At the core of all social networking is sharing.  This may be thoughts/ideas, photos, or links to information (i.e. news articles, blog posts, websites, etc.).  The problem that arises when you begin to use multiple social networking sites and services is sifting through all that.  Sure you can bring it all into one place with services like Hootsuite or TweetDeck, but the problem is you are still looking at a stream within columns that can easily becoming uninteresting.

Recently, a few companies have begun to address the problem by reassembling these feeds into a much more engaging format.  They have taken the concept of the newspaper format and reconstruct social networking feeds to appear on screen in that manner.  The newspaper in terms of format has always been the best in assembling large amounts of news in a rich reading experience.  So the idea of reassembling social networking streams in this manner is perfect in my opinion.  Some of these new services are:

1. Paper.li - This is a free online service that connects with a Twitter account.  The user can create multiple online 'papers' that can be generated from one's Twitter feed, searches, topics, or user created Twitter lists.  I prefer the Twitter List means since it allows you to create very targeted themed 'papers' that you have more control over since you select the users for that list.  This can be great for personal as well as business/organization use.  For example, Kathleen's Real Estate Daily allows her to bring comprehensive Real Estate related news to others in a daily automated manner.  Some other examples are:
1. The Palm-Coast-Flager-County Daily by Office Divvy.
2. Kathleen's Palm Coast Daily by Kathleen West
3. Kathleen's Real Estate Daily by Kathleen West
4. The Catholic Daily by yours truly.
5. The Google Daily by yours truly.
2.  Flipboard - This free iPad app takes multiple social networking and social media feeds and reassembles them into flip-through 'boards' that display the feeds in a newspaper style.  
3. PostPost -This free online service connects with one's Facebook account and displays it in the newspaper style.  I've  found this to be a great display but can be kind of 'buggy' and slow to respond.  

It will be nice to see these services take on a better presence in the mobile arena.  Paper.li for example does not display very well on a small screen.  In any event, these are great ideas and it will be interesting to see how they take shape for social networking services over the coming year.

Watch the Flipboard video below: