Threadsy

Literally months have passed since I first signed up to a new hope in social media, or at least that’s how it was sold to me. Threadsy.com is a new system that aims to “pull together” (get it?) various social media outlets and pipe them through a singular web2.0 interface, based on the web. This includes importing email, twitter, facebook and linkedIn accounts so in one, single timeline you see all of your tweets, status updates, emails and what not… all under one collective roof.

Still in closed beta, the system has just begun, but it works flawlessly. I would, as a programmer, be delighted to release this to the public immediately. The interface is smooth and brilliant. I do imagine it cuts out a lot of users of older browsers, or those on weaker systems then mine, as it is quite heavy on the DOM (document object model) stuff.

Email import is easy and intuitive. Much like the Apple Mail client, it'll fetch server data for you in most cases...

The first thing you do when you sign up is import and set up your connections. First it focuses on email. Just like any good email client should do, it only asks for your address and password. After that, it will go get the server details (stmp, imap etc. server addresses) and set it up for you. I’ve a few email addresses (mostly unused, mind) so this is a nice feature.

All my accounts... I am a whore.

Depressingly, for every email account I have, I almost manage a 1:1 ratio of social media accounts. I truly am a disgraceful whore of social media. Just like the email import, threadsy will go find your details for you by using Facebook Connect and OAuth on twitter. LinkedIn seemed to appear at random in my account, perhaps because that is linked by Facebook though this is not explicitly explained by the system. It is also a slightly scary prospect that Facebook potentially knows everything about me. It may also be why I somehow cannot apply for jobs on Facebook…!

The interlude screen explains precisely what's going on, and what threadsy is. Arguably it's a bit late to explain this...

After a brief “loading…” screen, the interface loads, hiding behind a small snapshot explaining exactly what the system does, somewhat making a case as to why you should care about threadsy… and why you should “pull yourself together”, as the title tag goes. Getting rid of this introductory screen, which inconveniently appears after you’ve already imported all of your details, will reveal the full interface. Anyone who’s used web email interfaces will be vaguely at home.

Here you have an inbox, which shows all of your emails, @reply tweets and page messages from Facebook. The filter dictates timeline as the most important aspect of this system, so an @reply will appear above an email, if it was received after the email was sent. You can, however, pop into individual accounts to get their specific inboxes to make things more convenient.

This lies to the left of a smaller (but resizable) tab containing the live feed of data coming from the people you’re connected to on your various systems. From here you can retweet, reply to and comment on (via Facebook) content given by users. It really is a rather good system. Every update (which occurs after some counter, which I have not figured out yet, but appears to be every minute or so) arrives with a cute “chime” sound, which can be disabled thankfully. It is, however, rather unoffensive to listen to. Carefully chosen chime sounds are important. I do enjoy the Facebook chat sound, incidentally. Also incidentally, Facebook chat is only available through the Meebo bar at the bottom of the screen, which also incorporates AIM, GTalk and Myspace IM.

The full interface. Inbox on the left, live feed on the right

It does exactly what it aims to do – pull together all of your social media outlets in one. It’s very smooth, pleasant to use and probably the only web interface for such things that didn’t induce projectile vomiting from my part. The design is smooth and very web-savvy for all the social media hipsters out there. Put simply, it works very well. The only thing it seems to lack is contextual search. In other words, if I see an interesting @reply from a user, I cannot see what tweet they are replying to. An easy thing to fix, undoubtedly. It also does a lot of things (i.e. Facebook) better then Tweetdeck (and also doesn’t have the inconvenience of being an Adobe Air application). If you use a Mac, like me (enter smug look), you can create a desktop application out of the site by using Fluid – a system I’ve discussed here before.

If you want to use it you need to sign up and get added to a special list. Alternatively, I have 10 beta invites available for readers. Just click here and fill in the form and go for it. The reason I’m not tweeting the signup codes etc. is because I want to give preference to readers. Keep in mind there’s only 10 invites, and I’ve no control over who gets them. So please be honest and just sign up for one. You are likely to get 10 invites afterwards yourself if you require more accounts for friends etc. And if you’re feeling generous, post the link to your invite code in the comments below. Social media in action, eh?

Below is a gallery of the threadsy system, including the images I posted above: