SocialThing is "lifestreaming" service similar to Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed that aggregates your friends' updates from services like Twitter, Facebook, and Last.FM.
There's one key difference however - unlike Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed, you don't have to tell SocialThing who your friends are. It pulls that information directly from the social network.
SocialThing may be scraping these services beyond what is permitted by their respective Terms of Service. However, if say Facebook were to block SocialThing, it would be the equivalent of telling their users that they don't own their own social graphs. If the blogosphere can go leap into action over an awkward interview, you would hope there would be some backlash if Facebook claimed ownership of our friend network data.
I like what SocialThing is doing - act first, and ask permission later. I think they're on the right side of the debate.
Was hanging out with the SocialThing guys this weekend. They're really cool.
Oh and check out their iPhone app.
http://socialthing.com/iphone
Posted by: Justin Thorp | March 12, 2008 at 07:12 AM