Berlin - While Facebook, Twitter and their ilk remain tops when it comes to social media programmes, there are a lot of third party services available that offer more options, including one that can monitor multiple networks at the same time.
Which one a person needs depends on how vital it is to keep social media links updated at all times from smartphones and tablets.
“Actually, Twitter and Facebook offer very good clients that are fine for normal users,” says Achim Barczok of German computer magazine c't. But those who need something more should look at the alternatives.
“The social clients can be used in multiple ways,” says Andreas Weck of technology magazine t3n. “To consume news, send off status updates or to get statistics, and all bundled right there in the dashboard.”
A lot of these alternate social media clients come pre-installed with operating systems. Some allow postings to be placed on a variety of services. Other alternate apps focus on extra privacy.
“I can better regulate what I tell the service,” explains Barczok.
That's in contrast with Facebook, which often asks about contact or location information. That feature can be suppressed with some of these other apps.
Florian Glatzner of the German Association of Consumer Centres says third-party clients often offer functions that go beyond what's available from the originals, or offer more of an overview. Some alternate Twitter clients allow tweets to be colour-coded.
Take Tweetbot for iOS (about R250).
“This app is optically more appealing and gives more oversight than the original client,” says Barczok. It offers extra bars for quick navigation through views and ongoing conversations.
Twicca or TweetCaster for Android also offer a lot of extras. Slices for iOS automatically sorts tweets into folders, providing better oversight by separating posts from friends and news sites, for example.
Friendcaster is an alternative Facebook app for iOS and Android. Since it allows a person to log in simultaneously with multiple accounts, it holds appeal for people logging in from work, says Barczok.
But Friendcaster doesn't offer all the possibilities of the Facebook app. Depending on one's settings, there's also the danger that one might not see all posts or have all one's own posts distributed for everyone to read.
HootSuite is another option for multiple log-ins.
“One the one hand, users are limited here. On the other hand, they can simultaneously post on multiple networks, like Facebooks, LinkedIn and Twitter,” says Barczok.
One special feature: HootSuite allows the options of setting specific times for items to be published.
“The devil is in the details,” says Weck.
Users have to decide up front what precisely they want to do with the tool and which networks are supported. Some, like Google+ or LinkedIn, are not necessarily integrated everywhere.
Dashboard services like Sprout Social or Falcon Social can integrate a lot of services and have a lot of options, but charge a relatively high monthly fee.
Buffer is another option that might be interesting for private users. Like HootSuite, there is a free, basic version.
Buffer lets people post status updates on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and App.net and then check to see how widely they've been seen, says Weck. Bottlenose.com offers access to various networks, but doesn't come in app form.
One of its main features is taking daily trending topics from the networks and putting them together into a daily cloud, says Weck.
“Just like Facebook, Twitter has in recent times been strongly limiting the use of connections,” says Barczok, even though there are more options with this service. Twitter's hesitance might be due to financial factors.
“It might be because ads are not made visible with the alternative apps.”
Glatzner also regrets that the networks are blocking connections.
“It's absolutely in the best interests of the consumer if they're opened up,” he says.
Nonetheless, whenever users experiment with social media apps, they should always consider the trustworthiness of the operator, bearing in mind that operators can theoretically read and rate all posts, just like the networks can.
- Sapa-dpa