Social media tools are some of the latest crazes these days. We happen to be huge fans of a ton of them here on ReadWriteWeb. Yet the biggest problem with most social media tools is that they aren’t for everyone. There’s a constant debate on how early adopters can persuade more mainstream users to try these tools out. We might have the most flexible social media tool available for any user: Yoono!
Widgets Galore
Yoono is a Firefox extension that sits in your browser’s sidebar and provides access to a ton of widgets that help keep you connected to your friends. The available widgets range from your favorite social networks such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and Flickr, to providing related web page recommendations.However the things that Yoono is able to do are endless. Essentially Yoono is a tool that can do a lot more than it seems at first glance.
How Mainstream and Early Adopters Can Use Yoono
For mainstream users, Yoono is the perfect tool for casual surfing habits. With Yoono in your sidebar you can easily access all of your contacts from popular social networks, instant messaging platforms and receive instant update notifications of what’s going on. You can keep up with your Facebook friend’s updates (sorry Myspace users). If you’re on Flickr, you can view the latest pics from the photostreams of your friends. For those that don’t wish to leave their current page just to see one of your friend’s latest pics, Yoono provides a fast loading overlay of any picture you hover your mouse over. You can also add comments to Flickr photos and upload your own images right from Yoono. For Twitter users, Yoono pushes the latest replies, direct messages, and updates from your twitter friends with the ability to reply and send updates right back. There are also widgets for Google Reader, Digg, and Youtube.
Early adopters can also find Yoono useful. Of course, the reasons stated above for mainstream users will also apply to early adopters. As an early adopter I’ve found more unique ways to Yoono. Normally I would overload Google Reader with a bunch of feeds that I’d like to keep track of. Flickr photostreams are a prime example of this for me. Now, I use Yoono instead to keep track of such feeds. Their web notes feature is great for annotating pages and sharing them with friends and contacts. The Discoveries widget is also valuable for finding related sites and services. We don’t recommend Yoono for heavy social media usage. However, Yoono can provide assistance in lightening the load of other tools that you might use. It’s just that flexible.
Room for Growth
This extension does what it says it does; it compliments your current tools instead of replacing them. There’s still plenty of room for Yoono to grow. Some of these widgets are not the real deal. The Gmail, Google Reader, and Digg widgets are more like mobile versions of their web service counterparts. Also, the extension has had numerous problems with several Firefox themes. So if you happen to run into a bug or two, turn off your theme to see if that helps. Installing a bunch of widgets at once could result in a serious overload and make Yoono seem very unappealing. Essentially, keep the amount of widgets you add low.
Learn How to Use Yoono in less than 6 Minutes
We think anyone could find Yoono to be a valuable social media tool that’s easy to use. The extension provides numerous offerings and flexible options to users. Signing into social networks is a breeze and updates are instant. Here’s a clip on how to use Yoono is less than 6 minutes:
company profile provided by
