Social networks. First, it was MySpace, now there’s a social network for pretty much everything. Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, WordPress, Brightkite, and god knows how many more. 
Then came “Ping.fm”. One site that allows you to update your status message on ALL these sites no matter where you are, and from a single website. Pretty neat. So, last night’s release of the Twitter client “Twhirl” interested me, because v0.9 has built in Ping.fm support. Meaning, I could use Twhirl to post to Twitter, and then get those updates pushed to Facebook, Plurk, and Brightkite – which are the three sites I use the most.
However, after thinking about it…no. If I do it that way, it works when I’m on a PC, but if I tweet from my iPhone while I’m out and about, I generally use Twitterrifc for that, and that doesn’t post to Ping.fm. Since I would have now had to disable Facebook from grabbing my status updates from Twitter, that means if I tweeted from my iPhone, Facebook wouldn’t get updated.
I’ve gone back to Twitterrific since then, but herein lies the problem. If I was to switch to using Ping.fm full time, I want an application for updating it on both my PC and iPhone. There’s Twhirl for PC/Mac, and “Pringle” for the iPhone, but I find them both….ugly. Twhirl not so much, but both apps, compared to Twitterrific on both platforms, are ugly. Plus there are other annoyances…if I update my location in Brightkite the way I had it setup originally/now, that update is pushed to Twitter, and then from Twitter to Facebook. Using the other method, it would only be pushed to Twitter. And not Facebook. 
So, until someone can design an app that can 1) have both desktop and iPhone clients that look pretty and work well, 2) update everything at once, no matter what, and 3) has no annoying quirks that I dislike…well…I’m sticking to Twitterrific.
I think, overall, Ping.fm works well, but it doesn’t work well enough for my liking yet. Oh, and if you want to follow me, do so on Twitter. I’m most active on there then anywhere else. Followed closely by Facebook. 
