I started using Ping.fm to update my various social network statuses, micro-blog entries and blogs. After spending a couple of days with it and getting used to the various features, I have to say I really love it.
What’s Good?
Practically everything. Ping.fm allows you to classify your social networks into three basic update categories: Blogs, Micro-blogs and Status Updates. So for instance, I consider Twitter (a supported service) a micro-blog and a place where I put status updates. So when I setup Twitter on Ping.fm, I included it in those categories. For Facebook, I only included it in the status updates category.
Now the cool part is the number of ways you can update your various social networks. My preferred way is via AOL Instant Messenger. For instance, sending this instant message to the pingfm AIMbot will send a status update to all the applicable social networks:
@s my status update
Notice the “@s” at the beginning of the command? That tells Ping.fm to send the message only to services I have in the “status updates” category. Similarly, you can use “@b” to send a message to your blog (really the syntax for blogging is “@b title^body”) or “@m” for micro-blogs. If you forget to leave off the @a part, then if will default to going to a predefined group of services. By default I have my updates go to the “status updates” category.
Other options for updating your social networks include email, an iGoogle widget, a Facebook app, a mobile web page and a desktop app (written by a ping.fm employee, but not officially supported by ping.fm).
One other feature that I find particularly useful is that ping.fm will automatically shorten URLs for you before sending them to your social networks. Now you don’t have to worry about doing this manually yourself.
What Doesn’t Really Matter?
Personally, I find Ping.fm pretty useless for posting to my regular blog (which you’re reading now). Why? Well, using instant messenger to post to my blog isn’t practical. Can you imagine trying to enter this post in AOL Instant Messenger? Yuck. I tried it once. Putting carraige returns in an instant messenger doesn’t work well. I ended up with a single-paragraph entry.
Perhaps sending a post via email would be okay, but if you’re connected enough to get to email you can probably get to your blog anyway. The only exception I could see is if you were behind a corporate web filter that prevents you from accessing your blog. Then using email may be a way to circumvent that filter.
Overall Impressions
I love ping.fm. I became addicated to micro-blogging about a month ago when I joined Twitter. Twitter, of course, is a gateway drug to other services like Plurk, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Pownce, etc. I’m a member of all of them now (yes, I’m sick). Ping.fm let’s me update all of them quickly and easily.
