I think the next big app will be a social media hub that collects all your stuff together in one place.
I have to keep on top of Twitter updates, remember to visit my Facebook, watch the email icon in the corner of my desktop, and read my feeds sometime. Then there’s Google Wave, and also about a million Web 2.0 services I just don’t use.
So: What if you could just open an application, and get a stream of Twitter statuses, Facebook updates, email headers, news, feeds, pictures, and anything else you’ve subscribed to, in a bite-sized format. If you want to be notified about emails, set it to pop up a message on your desktop. A little floating bar with several tiny icons could light up when you get something new.
One of the biggest problems I’ve encountered with mobile devices is that I have to switch between apps or web-pages to check different services.
Here are my own personal criteria:
- Small: It can’t be some huge window, like TweetDeck. It should be reducible to a single icon.
- Informative: None of this, “Hey, new stuff!” It should tell me what new stuff I just got.
- Push: Some services need to poll, but they should push as much as possible.
- All-purpose: Every service should fit into the form-factor. That includes images, songs, movies, blogs, tweets, status updates, and more.
- Beautiful: Well, of course.
- Responsive: Pretty important.
- Easy: It should walk users through the setup process, and shouldn’t need all that much information.
The winner will be the ones who make a well-designed and usable version of the above. I might try my hand at it!
Tags: social media