It seems like I’m writing a post about a new social network every other day. One day it’s Path, the next it’s Pinterest, and of course, we all have to hop onboard the ride because then we’ll be known as the cool kids who joined that network before it was cool. Managing these things can be a real pain in the butt.
So now we have Streamified, which isn’t a social network but a social network aggregator. Think of it like Flipboard, but instead of making individual magazines out of your feeds, it combines them all into one giant feed to rule them all. Want more? Of course you do.
Conceptually Speaking
Seriously, there are a lot of social networks out there. If you’re the type that likes to keep updated on your friends’ statuses, then you may find yourself flipping through a series of different apps on your iPhone just to find out who hated The Hunger Games and what that dog texted to his master. Having a unified inbox for your social networks makes just as much sense as the unified inbox for your email. After all, in both cases you’re just processing information.
There's an on-screen tutorial for when you get started.
Setting up the app will take a fair amount of time, depending on how many social networks you want to add into the mix. Your options are Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and Readability, which provides an interesting combination; I’ve never considered my LinkedIn feed something that needs following.
Finding Your Flow
When the app is setup, things start to go fairly smoothly. Although it will take a while to get your apps synced up (more on that later), once you’re rolling you can just flip up and down to get to the latest posts in the feed. If you don’t like that, you can swipe to the left and pull up the individual feeds for each network with each additional swipe. This form of navigation seems to be pretty popular nowadays, but that’s good because it works.
Adding your social networks can take a few minutes.
Swiping to the right gets you to your settings, and this is where you can add or change your networks. My hope is that as the app gains steam that more networks will be added, plus it would be nice to have multiple Twitter or Facebook pages depending on your situation. Like for me, I have five Twitter handles. It’d be nice to have room for that in the app.
Commenting, Liking and Posting
But what if you want to comment, like, retweet or post on your own network? No worries, Streamified has your back. Each individual post has its own series of buttons that allow you to make the appropriate response for the network of your choosing. Feel free to “Like” everything you see.
Retweet or post to your heart's content.
When it comes to posting new stuff, there’s a very nice little twist that’s reminiscent of HootSuite. Hit the New Post button in the top right corner of your stream and then you can select whatever networks you want to connect to. To try it out, I posted to both my Facebook and Twitter timelines simultaneously, and sure enough, it worked just fine. When it comes to posting new stuff, this may become my new go-to app.
Socially Awkward
This is a relatively new app, and as such, there are a few hiccups in the product. It took a long time to download my Tumblr feed, particularly when I first set it up, and the same thing happened with Twitter, too. Additionally, I noticed that the feed is slightly delayed — 5 to 10 minutes in some cases — meaning that if you want the absolute latest from your networks, you should probably view them individually.
There's an in-app browser, plus you can bookmark posts you like.
That’s pretty disappointing, considering that the entire purpose of the app is to give you all your streams in one place. I know that being behind ten minutes in my feeds isn’t going to kill me, but for some people, that’s an absolute deal breaker. In general, the speed of the app is the source of my disappointment. If it updated faster, then it would be the type of thing I could quickly read in the morning to catch up on the goings on overnight. But since it isn’t, it becomes something you open, wait to update, then use. Maybe it was my Wi-Fi connection or something, but I feel like the speed here needs fixing.
Summified
Do I like the app? I sure do, and I think that it’s definitely an excellent start to a cool idea. But really it’s just that — a start — and things like speediness and long download times really need to be worked out. It’s not that the app feels like a Beta or anything because it’s definitely polished (I love the Path-esque clock that appears on the timeline), but it’s just that the whole thing needs just a bit more to be perfect.
So here’s your decision: You can either get in on Streamified now so you can tell all your friends later that you were in before the app was popular, or you can wait until all the kinks are worked out. Your call.