by CHICKMELIONfreelance
There is a Beta on the block that is readily adopted by over 4 million downloads. (It has even surpassed Seesmic and TweetDeck in monthly users.) It comes as a welcome breath of fresh air for all those trying to juggle multiple social sites and messaging sites all at once. It takes your random “all over the place” information and contacts and organizes them into a handy desktop (or browser) feature called YOONO; offered for Windows, Mac and Linux. Best thing of all, this beta is: free,compact, intuitive, and oh so very easy to use.
Yoono supports Facebook, My Space, Youtube, Twitter, Flicker, Friend Feed, Linkedin, MSN, AIM, GTalk, and Yahoo Chat, with the promise of more coming.
We found out about Yoono via an email slapped down on our desktop and decided to take it for a test drive for the last two weeks. Yoono has become a mainstay tool for our social marketing activities and it has saved us loads of time and grief! In an environment where it seems that the work only piles up, it’s refreshing to get a little boost climbing on top of that pile, especially if it only takes 11.92 MB of space to do so.
Yoono is feature rich giving you versatility in organizing your “day to day” keeping an eye on what’s going on around you. It can be as large as you need it to be; as a fully opened sidebar with a browser (which can be rolled out of the way when not needed,) or as compact as a simple desktop icon at your ready. It offers a pop-up preview feature as well so you can keep an eye on current updates while you work on other projects and the yoono sidebar is parked. If it annoys you, there are the options to shut off the pop-up feature for select scheduled time frames or altogether if you so choose. (Turn the feature back on in the tool box section at the very top of the sidebar.)
The Desktop Sidebar:
This is the driving force of the program, from here you can control which of the support services you wish to interact with and download into the bar. Your toolbox at the top will allow you to add more as you need them You can give “across the board status updates” or “selective updates” depending on your need and preference. All your IM services can be run from one application as well - no more logging on to multiple services. There is a share option which allows you to share links, images & videos across all your networks, as well as the capacity to upload photos and link them into your messages. You can even share in your IM conversations by simply dragging and dropping web content.
keeping on top of your contacts/friends activities and updates is easy from this sidebar. It allows you to receive their messages, notes and tags in real time. The beautiful thing about this sidebar is that you only have to open one program, that’s it. Everything is controlled from one sidebar that can be tucked out of the way when you are not using it. In the initial opening of Yoono, as you check on your social sites and messaging sites you will be asked to plug in your name and password info, but that is the last time in that day that you will be bothered with it. Everything else is readily accessible when and where you want it, just one click away! Everything is pretty compact. You can quickly scan through the status updates for all or just one of your social/messaging sites at a time and when you see something you want to dive in deeper a mere touch of the link pops open the browser.
The Browser:
The foremost feature that impresses me about this roll out browser is that it is fast. I hit a link sent from my friends in my sidebar and the browser is opened up and on it at the snap of a finger. One hit on an icon at my tools section at the top of the sidebar and the browser rolls behind the sidebar and parks. I hit the same icon to open the browser back up and it holds the very same information that I left off with. This feature is fantastic for accommodating multi-tasking while keeping the desk space uncluttered.
The Only Things That Are Missing:
This would be a dream application had Yoono included two key features: the capacity to shrink links and the capacity to pre-schedule status updates. I use both of these features on another program which I run called Hootsuite. However I like the compact and versatile feel of Yoono and it’s accessibility over the very bulky and often temperamental Hootsuite. Maybe I will put it on my wish list and cross my fingers that enough people like myself request the additional features. That would fee up a considerable amount of bulk off of my daily work load, ultimately making me a very happy entrepreneur.
One final thing worthy to note is that you have the full support of the developers if you run into glytches. You can access help via a blog posted on their site at www.yoono.com, (which incidentally is where you can download the program) as well as a help page if you run into technical issues. In all essence, you really have nothing to lose but clutter, frustration, and wasted time by giving Yoono a try... you just won’t regret it!
