It all started with my completely faithful web 2.0 client, tweekdeck, gave up on me. It would not sync my face book account, it will not even register new one. May be some changes with Facebook authentication that these guys have not caught up with. So I think after around a six month of totally dedicated usage of tweetdeck, I had to search for an alternative.
I found two completely different approaches to solve this problem, I had to decide between two of these. And this post is the story of that.
Email like update do not work with web 2.0. A typical email client works very nearly similar to outlook view. An incoming email is added either to the top or bottom of a folder. Each email is meant for a set of people who are either pigs OR hens(apologies for the SCRUM wordings here, this in short means that two kind of people, who either are affected by such an exchange Or have a say in such an exchange). Ideally the people who should act are in the "to" line and any FYI folks are in the "CC" line. Do not ask me why BCC is all about :). Typically emails are serious business and they are exchanged at the maximum average rate of three to four an hour per producer. The producer gets to decide who should be involved, he also gets to decide who all can subsequent (re)producers can involve. This is kind of state based model where each email expects some action, at least acknowledgement of comprehension and reporting back. It may also expect a dialog.
In comparison, web2.0 is like a Bazaar thing. You give a shout and if your shout is unique, hopefully some people may be attracted to you and you can form such groups. It is not a definite necessity that a group has to be listening to every shouts of its members. The shouts can be multimedia as well. You can also appreciate the shouts, in some cases by repeating them, in other solutions by marking them as "liked". As there are multiple sites claiming to be platforms for web 2.0 interactions, it is always possible that you are registered to more than one such site/platform. Another good thing about all this thing is that you are not tied to a protocol,website. any body can build an experience on the platform.(BTW, there are some really cool twitter feeds being built on top of windows azure currently). This gives the user power which it did not have before. As there are more than one platform where things are happening in parallel,the best approach is to have a spreadsheet like view where each column represents a platform. This is what tweetdeck does and does well. For me the sites I wanted to integrate were: facebook, twitter, linkedin and google buzz. The idea of this interface is that each of the update (upon configuration) is displayed as a biscuit (this is the rectangular thing that pops up on a new message). And like Pavlov's dogs, now arrival of this biscuit satisfies the sanctum sanctorums of web 2.0 junkies like me. Till last two-three years, it was ding on an email in my inbox. I can edit, reply to the same in the same window or create new shouts. All this is easy and comfortable.
The problem is that there is a third case, which does not merge so well with web 2.0, which is chat. If I see, we have been using chat almost for the same time as we have been using email (gosh, I am a software engineer, I should know this more thoroughly :(). Chat was completely independent from the email. Some of the email solutions, especially the online ones, did surely try to give an integrated solution. But it was kind of a slap on. So chat should be another angle of any solution that I am trying to evaluate. Another thing is that after all this email has not gone away. It will not go away soon as well. There are still some improvements and innovation there which needs to happen. Half an year ago, I was looking at a bunch (two to be exact :)) email aggregators. Digsby stuck as the most important one, but then I left using that. Now it looks like they have a desktop client which does what they used to do online, it also aggregates my social feeds, aggregates my chat accounts and gives me a complete window where I can see my friends and whether they are online or not and I can easily chat with them with any chat site. This also aggregates my email and reports the read/unread statistic. At the cost of few more clicks, you can reach the email and reply to it.
So to according to digsby postulate, web 2.0 does not replace something. It adds a new dimension to my interactions.
And the interesting point is that there are two ways to get to the web 2.0 thingie. One is build on top of the existing functionality, AKA chat and email, integrate these and then add web2.0 platforms to the same stream. This is the digsby way.
Second approach is that we should implement web 2.0 fully and leave every thing else to the choice of users. How he wants to use the earlier technologies.
It is a tough call to choose between these two approaches. I just needed one tool which works for me. But because I agree that the email and chat need some more work to be super useful and I think these are two different streams where progress will be made and web 2.0 is just a new kid on the block and nothing much else, I ended up making a convenient decision.
Right now,I am using both, digsby and seesmic desktop. Digsby as integrated IM and email client does not look like it has any comparisons. Seesmic desktop on the other hand takes the interface provided by tweet deck. Adds some better User Interface and tree traversal. It needs some more features of tweetdeck (for example: deleting / marking as read etc) and it will be the best client there is.
The next inflection point is going to be the smart phone entry on the block. I have not yet used my web 2.0 clients on any of the phone. Actually I am waiting for my windows phone seven drop. Once it comes to me, I think it will be easier for me to do most of the things I do on desktop on the phone. That will be my first smart phone I will actually use smartly, hopefully. So Watch this space for the updates on the phone revolution and how it would have changed the way I do things. Signing off till then, tada.
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