MyLife.com, a “people search” engine that searches across social networks, has just launched a new feature called “Personal Relationship Management” (PRM), and it’s much cooler than it sounds. It’s a browser-based service that lets you view your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn feeds all in one stream and reply, like, retweet and so on as needed.
This PRM stream appears on the ‘Home’ screen, from which you can launch all kinds of searches for old classmates, colleagues, singles and such, using MyLife’s existing people searches, already in use by over 60 million people. It’s a ‘freemium’ site, and the paid features give you more access to features like ‘Who’s Searching For You,’ showing you people with whom you aren’t already connected.
The free service is valuable. It’s great to be able to manage all these social accounts from one feed. You can do this from apps like HootSuite or TweetDeck, but those don’t offer the broad-reaching search capabilities MyLife.com does. Even the free model lets you manage your social networks and quickly find people or messages on them all in one place. The paid version expands those capabilities beyond your existing social network connections.
The sign-up process might try to fool you, but don’t worry; the basic features are free. Once you click through to sign up, there’s a teeny link in the top-right corner that says ‘Continue with limited access’ to let you past the paid signup that confronts you before you get to see what the service does.
The free MyLife.com service is pretty pushy. It pops up huge, meaty pictures of cheeseburgers in your face and asks you to sign up for MyLife Deals emails. But that’s the price of free, and for someone looking for a Web service to manage one’s online life in a centralized place, you can’t ask for more than this in terms of features.
Make sure to check your spam folder for your sign-up email, because ours ended up there.
Upcoming Features
CEO Jeff Tinsley says that MyLife will release mobile apps later this month, and that’s a great use case. One app that lets users manage Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn will save lots of icon space. Google+ integration is coming soon, as are Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail and AOL Instant Messenger. It’s an interesting proposal to open a social media dashboard up to email and IM, too, so watch for upcoming releases later this year.
How do you manage your online social life? Share your solutions in the comments.
