Posted on July 03, 2008 by Katy

It’s almost as though I woke up one morning and everyone I know in the blogosphere was talking about Ping.fm. I heard about it on Twitter, there were conversations happening on Plurk and then I got some emails about it. “Katy… have you heard?”

You almost have to wonder how a single site gains popularity in the blogosphere in just a single night. But, regardless of how it happened, it did. And if you haven’t heard, bloggers are talking about Ping.fm as if it is the new social media darling and no doubt a good way to organize lifestreaming sites in a single place.

What is it?

Ping.fm is an update service for all microblogging platforms. It allows you to make uniform status updates across the board to a lot of the most commonly used sites:

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

Presuming you’re a member of all 17 of these sites, you could use Ping.fm to update your status or microblog across the board. Of course, if you just belong to a few of these sites you’ll also find great benefits.

Usability

Really, as much as social networking means to me, I am not an early adapter. Typically I’m the one hanging out in the back to see how others like, dislike, or turn results with a service. But this is one that I jumped in with pretty quickly (I think) and I find the site quite easy to use, figure out, and navigate. This isn’t rocket science.

Setting up Ping.fm to “ping” a service you use is as easy as entering your username and password for the given service. To send out status updates or microblogs to your given social networking sites, they couldn’t offer a larger variety of options:

1. Login to Ping.fm
2. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
3. Google Talk
4. Yahoo Instant Messenger
5. iGoogle Gadget
6. Facebook
7. iPhone Web App
8. Moble App

You can also enable a social networking icon (like displayed at the bottom of my posts) though a WordPress plugin that will allow your visitors to use Ping.fm to broadcast your posts. More exposure = more visitors, right? Plus, who doesn’t find those social bookmarking icons useful at one point or another? (I’ll be adding this option to I’m Blogging That this weekend.)

Could be Better

There’s not a lot to complain about. Chances are if you belong to that many social networking websites that handle status updates and microblogging you’re spending a good deal of your day updating all of that. This makes it easy, fast, and streamlined. And the variety of ways to get your updates out there make it even easier and more convenient than visiting each of these sites or downloading app after app to try and get updates completed.

However, the only downfall that I see is that I cannot view the mircoblogs and status updates of others using their service. I still have to head to Twitter to check out what others are saying and check for replies, same goes for Plurk. Perhaps adding in the feeds to our dashboards is something that they’ll add in later but for now, who knows.

My Results

When I have 1,000 things on my plate it’s difficult to factor in time to head to so many sites and publish something worth reading for those who are following me. I’m not always so witty to come up with something in less than 140 characters. But since I started using Ping.fm I’m willing to find more to say that enables me to publish updates more often. As a direct result, I’m now getting more traffic than I ever have to my blog from both Twitter and Plurk.

Private Beta

Ping.fm is still so new, they’re in private beta. This usually means that you need to have an invite or some kind of “in” to actually get your foot through the door. But never fear, you can join the site today using “pingscompany.” And when this code changes, I’ll update this post to ensure access to Ping.fm.

What do you think?

I cannot fathom that bringing together microblogging sites is ever a bad thing but, what’s your opinion? Can you see yourself using a service like Ping.fm to update your multiple accounts and do you think that it would save you some time during your day? Better yet, are you already using Ping.fm — what’s your thoughts?