Social media tools are some of the latest crazes these days. We happen to be huge fans of a ton of them here on ReadWriteWeb. Yet the biggest problem with most social media tools is that they aren't for everyone. There's a constant debate on how early adopters can persuade more mainstream users to try these tools out. We might have the most flexible social media tool available for any user: Yoono!
Yoono is a Firefox extension that sits in your browser's sidebar and provides access to a ton of widgets that help keep you connected to your friends. The available widgets range from your favorite social networks such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and Flickr, to providing related web page recommendations.However the things that Yoono is able to do are endless. Essentially Yoono is a tool that can do a lot more than it seems at first glance.
For mainstream users, Yoono is the perfect tool for casual surfing habits. With Yoono in your sidebar you can easily access all of your contacts from popular social networks, instant messaging platforms and receive instant update notifications of what's going on. You can keep up with your Facebook friend's updates (sorry Myspace users). If you're on Flickr, you can view the latest pics from the photostreams of your friends. For those that don't wish to leave their current page just to see one of your friend's latest pics, Yoono provides a fast loading overlay of any picture you hover your mouse over. You can also add comments to Flickr photos and upload your own images right from Yoono. For Twitter users, Yoono pushes the latest replies, direct messages, and updates from your twitter friends with the ability to reply and send updates right back. There are also widgets for Google Reader, Digg, and Youtube.
Early adopters can also find Yoono useful. Of course, the reasons stated above for mainstream users will also apply to early adopters. As an early adopter I've found more unique ways to Yoono. Normally I would overload Google Reader with a bunch of feeds that I'd like to keep track of. Flickr photostreams are a prime example of this for me. Now, I use Yoono instead to keep track of such feeds. Their web notes feature is great for annotating pages and sharing them with friends and contacts. The Discoveries widget is also valuable for finding related sites and services. We don't recommend Yoono for heavy social media usage. However, Yoono can provide assistance in lightening the load of other tools that you might use. It's just that flexible.
This extension does what it says it does; it compliments your current tools instead of replacing them. There's still plenty of room for Yoono to grow. Some of these widgets are not the real deal. The Gmail, Google Reader, and Digg widgets are more like mobile versions of their web service counterparts. Also, the extension has had numerous problems with several Firefox themes. So if you happen to run into a bug or two, turn off your theme to see if that helps. Installing a bunch of widgets at once could result in a serious overload and make Yoono seem very unappealing. Essentially, keep the amount of widgets you add low.
We think anyone could find Yoono to be a valuable social media tool that's easy to use. The extension provides numerous offerings and flexible options to users. Signing into social networks is a breeze and updates are instant. Here's a clip on how to use Yoono is less than 6 minutes:
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An excellent post, and a number of great resources provided, too. Thanks
Posted by: Pro auto class | September 5, 2008 11:26 PM
The majority of people still do not use Firefox and the majority of Firefox users are early adopters. So even if all Firefox users converted to Yoono, that is still breaking very little ground as far as the mainstream is concerned.
As long as Yoono remains confined to Firefox, its chances of bringing social media tools to the masses remains small.
Posted by: Rupert | September 6, 2008 2:49 AM
Wow great article..
I wish i should use Yoono .This can help me alot.
thanks for the post.
Posted by: mnvamsi | September 6, 2008 3:47 AM
Thanks for the great write up Corvida. As someone who considers himself an early adopter I often need to remind myself that, as you said, most social media tools aren't for everyone. Yoono is striving to make a tool that meets the needs for early adopters as well as casual internet users and everyone in-between (that's where that flexibility you mentioned comes in.) It's definitely a challenge.
@Rupert You're right that the majority of people aren't using Firefox. As it stands right now, most people are on some version of IE. We quietly rolled out an IE version a couple weeks ago that's in an alpha phase. We're hoping to open up the beta phase to everyone in another couple of weeks. But if you'd like to test the out the IE version right now shoot me an email at kcuneo at yoono dot com.
Posted by: Kevin | September 7, 2008 10:31 PM