The service lets users send a message through one interface (SMS, IM, web publishing tools) and then automatically cross posts it to more than 30 other social networking sites. It's a way to broadcast your messages into more networks than you could otherwise participate in. Now with some very visible investment, the company should be able to scale and roll out even more features.

Ping.fm is just one of a number of companies trying to help users get their content out into multiple social networks automatically. They are all a little bit different. New entrant Tarpipe may offer the most sophisticated user controls and Pixelpipe stores high resolution copies of the photos and video it broadcasts in lower quality. There are a number of different services like this, but Ping.fm may be the most popular and now it's getting a big boost from Ito and Hoffman.

Reid Hoffman was one of a number of early PayPal execs who made out well when eBay bought their company in 2002. Now referred to as "the PayPal mafia," the group sticks together informally to invest in or work for their many small investments in new Web 2.0 companies. (See, for example, our news breaking coverage of another PayPal team member, Dave McClure, joining the high profile Founders Fund last week.) This group has been closely tied to the early days of YouTube, Facebook and Digg. For an excellent and engaging history of the connections between all these companies, see Sarah Lacy's new book Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good.

Getting an investment from Hoffman could bode well for future, larger, fund raising efforts by Ping.fm. Hoffman is in touch with many of the hottest projects on the web - he's on the Board of Mozilla, Kiva.org, gaming company Zynga and a number of other companies.

Lacy calls Hoffman a "friend-tor," as opposed to an investor. He's among the group of young technologists who have experienced the good and bad about institutional investors and can relate to young technologists who need to be more cautious than most people were in the first web bubble. Plus LinkedIn is awesome, so we're sure Hoffman offers good advice.

Joi Ito has an equally impressive resume (see his Wikipedia profile, for example). He was an early stage investor in Flickr, Last.fm and many other very interesting companies.

Will these two investors make a big difference in helping Ping.fm in particular, and cross posting to multiple social networks, a standard part of life online? Only time will tell, but with the proliferation of niche social networks and the long tail of participation online across networks large and small - it makes sense. Consider the growth of mobile media publishing as well and there's all the more reason to get your content out of a single silo of Flickr, or Twitter. Hoffman and Ito have already bet on it.

The central hub for your work on Tarpipe is the 'workflows' tab, which looks a lot like the interface for Yahoo Pipes. The workflow tab allows you to control how, where, and what part of your data will be published. You can, for example, set up Tarpipe to receive an email, turn the title into a Twitter and Plurk post, upload an email attachment to Flickr or PhotoBucket, and then add the URL of that picture to your Twitter message as well, while also saving a copy of your picture on Evernote at the same time. All of this is done through a simple drag-and-drop interface that pretty much explains itself once you start using it.

Supported Services

Among the services currently supported by Tarpipe are Flickr, PhotoBucket, Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk, FriendFeed, TinyURL, and Tumblr. Tarpipe also just announced its integration with Evernote, which allows you to use Evernote's OCR features to automatically tag pictures.

Other Features

Mac users can also make use of Dropipe, a small OSX droplet that connects to Tarpipe and lets you upload pictures directly to the service from your desktop.

Tarpipe is also working on a new feature which will let users publish content on multiple social media sites through the use of a simple form, but without the ability to customize these workflows.

Verdict

Tarpipe is a great alternative to services like Ping.fm or PixelPipe, especially if you want to customize the flow of your data more granularly. Developers can make use of an extensive API, and, as a bonus, Tarpipe also supports OpenID, OAuth, and microformats.

Use case: automatically tag a screenshot using Evernote from Bruno Pedro on Vimeo.

Supported Services

To start using Pixelpipe, you simply pick which services you want your files distributed to, enter your login credentials, and upload your files to Pixelpipe. If you have ever used Ping.fm, this process will seem quite familiar to you.

Among the services Pixelpipe supports are Facebook, Flickr, imeem, Picasa, Photobucket, Vimeo, SmugMug, Shutterfly, Box.net, Zoomr, YouTube and Kyte. Pixelpipe also supports a number of blogging and micro-blogging platforms, including Pownce, Blogger, Livejournal, tumblr, Vox, and Wordpress, as well as any other platform that supports publishing through the MetaWeblog or Atom protocols. Thanks to the TwitPic integration, posting to Twitter is also covered.

Pixelpipe also allows you to forward media files via mail, which means that you can use it for a large number of services that are not supported directly, but that support uploads via email. Thanks to this, you can also send your files to services like FriendFeed or Posterous (which, by the way, now also supports parallel posting to a number of different blogging and photo sharing sites and has just announced support for video files as well).

Uploading

To upload files, Pixelpipe has developed a number of different stand-alone applications and plugins. PixelPipe also supports basic uploading by email through a custom email address (very handy if you want to send a picture from your phone, for example). For Mac users, PixelPipe has developed an iPhoto plugin and if you are a real hardcore user, you can even have it forward your files to an FTP account.

We tested the 'Pixelpipe Uploadr' on our Windows machine and were generally impressed with the ease of use of the application, which is a port of the Flickr Uploader. One nice feature of the desktop uploader is that it supports tagging.

Pixelpipe also provides a universal Java uploader and the company plans to release both a Firefox plugin as well as an iPhone application in the near future.

Storage

Currently, Pixelpipe is also storing the full resolution images its users upload on Amazon's S3, but it only surfaces the thumbnails of these images at this point. Pixelpipe also utilizes Amazon's EC2, but Brett was quick to point out that the team has built Pixelpipe without hooking into any of Amazon's unique services in order to be able to port it over to other platforms if needed.

As Brett also told us, Pixelpipe will soon announce limits for the length of time and amount of storage the service will offer, but he also stressed that Pixelpipe is basically a set-and-forget service. You simply set up your pipes and forget.

API

Developers who want to built on top of Pixelpipe can easily do so. The service supports the Atom 0.3 and 1.0 standard, as well as the Flickr API, SMTP, and they will also support a MediaSock standard very soon. Pixelpipe is also developing its own API, which should also be available in the near future. Thanks to using these APIs, developers should be able to quickly add Pixelpipe support to their applications if they are so inclined.

Verdict

In our tests, Pixelpipe worked exactly as advertised. There was almost no noticeable delay between sending files to Pixelpipe and seeing the uploaded files on Twitter, FriendFeed, Picasa , or Flickr. Thanks to its wide range of supported services, Pixelpipe looks like a winner to us.

Hey!Spread provides a similar (but paid) service for video files and Ping.fm does the same thing for short text messages. In the near future, Pixelpipe will also announce a more direct integration with Twitter and they are constantly adding new services.

Invites

Pixelpipe graciously offered 1000 invites for RWW readers, so head over here and sign up.

HelloTxt

HelloTxt was one of the first status updating services to arrive and still has the biggest list of supported services - currently 21 - to choose from. This list is the largest thanks to HelloTxt's support of several Twitter clone services that were either built for or that have attracted a non-English speaking userbase like the popular Italian service Meemi, the German and French Frazr, and the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French beemood.

HelloTxt is also available on the go on your mobile at m.hellotxt.com, via email, and via SMS. There's a facebook application, too.

Supported Services: Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, MySpace, Brightkite, Bebo, LinkedIn, Hi5, Plaxo, Tumblr, Meemi, Beemood, Plurk, Gozub, Frazr, Numpa, Mexicodiario, Feecle, Fanfou, Identica.

Ping.fm

Ping.fm is a newcomer, still in private beta (get in with the invite code "pingyoulater"), and is fast becoming a popular competitor to HelloTxt. It doesn't have any of the smaller, foreign language services, but it still has a long list of services available - 17 in total at the moment - including a couple that HelloTxt misses like Xanga and Blogger.

In addition to the Ping.fm Facebook app, Ping.fm integrates with IM services like AOL, Google Talk, and Yahoo! Messenger. There's also an iGoogle Gadget, a mobile web page, and an iPhone web app available. Profilactic uses Ping.fm's API to power their status updating service.

Supported services: Bebo, Blogger, Brightkite, Facebook, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, Xanga.

Sendible

Sendible is the latest addition to the list of social media message-sending apps, this one more focused on the ability to schedule your messages than to do mass updates. Although the service supports several different services with more on the way, they have not yet provided an easy way to update all the services at once. However, the fact that messages can be scheduled is Sendible's unique feature, which is why it will have some draw - at least until another competitor comes along offering this and universal updates, too.

Supported services: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, SMS, and email. They will also soon be supporting Friendster, Hi5, Orkut and Xing.

SocialThing!

Somewhat mistakenly hailed as a competitor to FriendFeed, SocialThing's goal is really to be more of a "digital life manager" instead. Yes, it does stream your social media a la FriendFeed, but it also allows you to interact with that stream by sending data back to the supported services. In addition, you can use SocialThing! to update your status at any time by clicking on the "Post" link found on the top-right of the homepage.

Supported services: del.icio.us, Digg, Last.fm, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, flickr, Pownce. In progress are LiveJournal, MySpace, and RSS. Users can also vote on what services will be added next.

Minggl

Minggl is a social interaction manager that comes in the form of a browser toolbar for Firefox 1.5+ and IE6+. With this toolbar, you can auto-login to your social networks at once and stay updated with the latest info about your friends' activity on the various services. Via its "Status Blaster" feature, you can also easily update all the multiple social networks Minggl supports at the same time.

Supported services: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg

Apps!

There are several apps out there that allow you to interact with the various social services you use without logging into the services' web sites. However, the problem is that most of these apps focus on just one or two services, usually FriendFeed and Twitter. If that's all you need, then there are tons of apps to choose from including Twhirl, Alert Thingy, bTT, feedalizr, and mySocial AIR. (Plurkers can use Plurkair or Plurk It.)

Mac OS users have it even better, though - they have access to a downloadable app, MoodBlast, which updates Twitter, Tumblr, Pownce, Jaiku, Facebook, Skype, Adium, and iChat.

However, what we're really in need of is a cross-platform app that does the same. For example, Ping.fm or HelloTxt on AIR would rock. Someone build that please?

How would you describe Socialthing! in simple terms?

Socialthing!'s goal is to be what we call a "digital life manager". It's a place that you will see the things that you and your friends are doing, interact with them (while those interactions publish to the originator of the content) and also be able to create content from the interface while it publishes to all the networks you might be a part of)

Many people see FriendFeed and Socialthing! as serving a very similar purpose. Do you think Socialthing! is in competition with FriendFeed or do you feel that they are two separate audiences and the services can coexist? If so, how do you see each being used simultaneously? If not why or how do you think Socialthing! is better than FriendFeed or Ping.fm?

I think that Socialthing! and FriendFeed are two very different things. Socialthing! is a digital life manager, a single place that you will go to manage the networks that you're a part of elsewhere. FriendFeed is a place that you go to create meaningful conversation around content. The aggregation of the content means that everything that's in there can be conversed around. The conversation stays inside of FriendFeed for good reason, because elsewhere, it may be out of context.

Socialthing! isn't necessarily better or worse than FriendFeed, just different. They're two very different value propositions, and it just depends on how you want to interact with your networks, and whether or not you think adding another network into the confusion is a good/bad thing. As for distinctions with Ping.fm, they are just simply a publisher of status, much like Profilactic's 155+ isn't only because of our lack of the time that we've been on the market, and us being in private beta. It's because the services do very different things with those services. One is that we don't just aggregate a feed, but rather, aggregate your feed, all of your friends, and all of the things that they've been doing on those services. This is an incredible amount of more work. This means that there has to be a solid UI to support it, especially considering information overload. It also means that there has to be a scalable way to be able to fetch so many friends at once. One thing that's also very different about our infrastructure is that we do live calls to the sites when the user comes to our site, so that for certain services that make more sense to have it, the information is fresh, rather than 20+ minutes old. For sites like Twitter, this is of utmost importance.

Now, going forward we do intend on adding services at a very rapid pace, but we are also letting our community vote on these services. Since helping manage peoples' digital lives is our game, we need to make sure we have all of the most important services implemented, so we're including a Digg-like voting mechanism soon that will take care of this and let us know which services are most important to our users.

We're also planning on going far beyond just doing basic social services that have explicit content being generated, but we'll be elaborating more on this later.

As for the profile page, we'll be implementing this soon, and we'll have more details on it also when it's released.

When I wrote my review of the two services, the reason that I chose Socialthing! over FriendFeed was because Socialthing! sends all user activity out to the external sites whereas FriendFeed keeps everything internal as FriendFeed comments. This essentially makes FriendFeed a social network of social networks while Socialthing! is (currently) an aggregator for social networks. In fact, I feel that FriendFeed is adding to my information overload whereas Socialthing! currently helps me receive a lot of information and deal with it efficiently. Do you see that changing and Socialthing! becoming a network of sorts or was that an intentional decision?

I don't see us changing in that manner. We don't want to be a social network on our own. One distinction between us and all of our "competitors" is that there is actually no concept of "friend" on our site. If you're friends with somewhere on the social web, then you're friends on our site. The idea behind this was that there's just simply too much "friending" that exists on the web right now, and going and searching for your friends with every single new service that pops up is annoying and repetitive, so not requiring the user to do that was of utmost importance.

As for the commenting and things like that, it's likely that in the future, FriendFeed will do whatever they can to push those comments outside of the FriendFeed architecture, but it's also going to be difficult. Currently they don't work with any APIs, and even when they do, pushing back comments is not exactly the easiest thing to do, especially with the context that they're providing. But they're smart, and they'll get it done. The question for the consumer at that point is whether they want to have another place to have a conversation or something to simply sift through all of the unmanageable streams of activities.

Is there a plan to release a public API, embeddable widgets, or other ways to export the aggregated data out of Socialthing!?

We have a very solid API roadmap currently in the plans. The API will allow most all of the functionality of the existing website to be put elsewhere. Our thought is that people will build desktop apps, mobile apps and other mashups so that the information that we're aggregating/displaying can be consumed in interesting ways.

We will provide a few of our own things, however, things like Javascript widgets and the like. But at the same time, we've seen an incredible success by companies building things like desktop applications built on Twitter that Twitter didn't have to spend any time on at all. We like this and will likely be hoping for a similar result.

How do you think you are improving or plan to improve or innovate the concept of lifestreaming? And finally, what do you think is Socialthing!'s killer app? What is the one feature that will set it apart from the competition and hopefully help it gain greater market share?

The concept of Lifestreaming is very new, and I guarantee you that if you were to ask the average Facebook user what a Lifestream is they would have absolutely no idea. But they know what their NewsFeed is for sure. So that's what we want to innovate on. Bringing Lifestreaming to the masses with a very simple, easy to use interface where there is hardly any onboarding process required.

As for our killer app? I think it's simply just being able to see what all of your friends on all of your networks are doing without ever having to add them, and then being able to communicate with them, all without ever leaving the same site. Imagine Meebo, or Trillian for social networks.