Threadsy is a tool to bring online life into one website. In many ways it has succeeded were previous attempts have failed. It looks great, updates quickly, and has an intuitive interface. While the application is still in beta, not quite ready for prime time, it's functional and intuitive.Pros
Threadsy can use all relevant email clients, Facebook, and Twitter. It neatly organizes all new emails, tweet mentions, and Facebook updates into an easy to follow to thread. It seamlessly integrates the commenting system of Facebook so that users can handle most of their daily Facbebook business right from Threadsy, as well as being able to update Twitter and Facebook from a single status update area with a couple clicks.
Both the master thread, of all things relevant to you, and your Twitter/Facebook stream sit on your main page. One of my favorite features is the people tab on the Facebook/Twitter stream. It allows you to click a persons name from either Facebook or Twitter and see their bio, most recent upates, and photos. It's not a revolutionary feature, but the implementation gives it a whole new life. It's one of those features that just works how it always should have. Now that it's there I can't live without.
Cons
The developers/management are leaning hard on their beta tag. Meaning features are implemented a bit hap-hazardly, and I just barely accept the state of the website as beta. If a website is completely open to the open public and supporting ad’s, calling it a beta is pushing it. There are a lot of features that have been polished really well and work as expected, but others leave me wondering.
The IM functions, on the bottom left of the page, just don't work. I have tried several of the platforms offered G-talk, Facebook, and AOL and haven't been able to successfully use any of them. The center column allows you to choose widths, but the choices are so limited it's pointless. I would rather see poorly developed concepts left out all together than to try them and experience frustrating results.
Other problems include the layout. I may be alone on this, but I would prefer my Twitter/Facebook stream to take center focus as opposed to my "inbox". At the very least it would be great to have the choice on what will be the focus of your main page. The "inbox" also looks cluttered, because it contains all of your messages, by default I would expect the inbox to only include unread items. You can switch the main pane to be unread only but then your page is taken up by a big black box, and the main pane gets reset to "inbox" every time you leave Threadsy.
The last con belongs to Facebook, but affects Threadsy. A Threadsy status update doesn't make it to my friend’s news feed, it only posts to my wall. This is pretty much the opposite of what you want a status update to do. They are meant to be seen. However this is Facebooks fault, they have designed their API to keep people coming to their Facebook pages. It's an unfortunate and annoying decision by Facebook, and does bring down the experience of Threadsy a bit.
Conclusion
Although my list of cons is much longer than my pro's, I highly recommend Threadsy. It has allowed me to wrangle my social life on the web,and reconnect with email accounts I had left for dead. The small list of pros is actually a testament to the way Threadsy works. The things that work, work so well I take them for granted. The process is just too natural to notice, which is great.
Rating: 7/10
www.Threadsy.com
I found out about threadsy, a web app, from lifehacker see their post here http://lifehacker.com/5531448/threadsy-combines-all-your-inboxes-and-social-streams-on-one-page.
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2 Response to Threadsy Review
Thanks for the review. Insightful pros and cons. Glad you like things overall so far. In response to some of your cons, as you say, the Facebook issue stems from something that Facebook changed recently. Posting from threadsy used to update your Facebook status, we'll change it to work properly again.
Regarding the IM issues, we're using the Meebo bar right now. They're putting some ads on the bar too. The specific sign in issues you're seeing sound like problems on meebo's end (http://meebo.com/support)
Regarding layout, we plan on continuing to improve this. The latest view now lets you use around 50% of most screens to see your streams bigger with large photos and videos. Look for more layout improvements in the future.
Scott
http://threadsy.com
Hi,
Just a quick update. We've fixed the Facebook posting issue so it now posts to your status, not just on your wall.
Also, since your post, we've added some new features to the stream:
Twitter stats: http://blog.threadsy.com/2010/05/28/now-see-twitter-stats-in-threadsy/
See more photos: http://blog.threadsy.com/2010/05/20/see-more-photos-in-your-threadsy-stream/
Look for continuous improvements as we move forward,
Scott
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