We've written quite a bit about the need for an open, easy to manage social network protocol, but face it, at the moment there's no real solution in sight. There are, however, better ways to handle your social networking life than logging in to twenty sites everyday.
I’ve been collecting all my network feeds and putting them in Google Reader and using my custom blogging software to disseminate updates, but even that’s a bit cumbersome at times, which is why I liked Steve Rubel’s collection of tips for managing your social network via e-mail.
Rubel breaks his tricks into four categories:
There’s several tips in here I had never thought of, such as using an e-mail to SMS gateway to get around the fact that Facebook only allows outside updates via SMS (although recent changes in the Facebook API do allow outside status updates so look for even smoother ways to update your Facebook status in the near future). Note that, as far as I can tell, the SMS Gateway service Rubel refers to is not free.
Other interesting ideas: run a Twitter Digest feed through R-Mail, RSSFwd or similar and have it land in your inbox as a once daily e-mail digest.
The remainder of the tips refer to ways of filtering, sorting and indexing the data you’re pulling in. Rubel has everything geared toward GMail, but for the most part these tricks will work with any e-mail provider.
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