Yoono: Manage All Your Social Networks at One Place

6/16/2010 03:08:00 PM // 2 comments // MiRuL // Category: Ubuntu Desktop //

How many social networking accounts do you have to maintain? Two? Three? or did I hear five? There is Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed and so many social networks that installing a separate desktop client for each one of them is not possible.

There are individual desktop clients like TweetDeck for Twitter, Twhirl for Friendfeed and Facebook photo uploader for managing your Facebook account. Each of these social networks can be used from the browser but then again, it’s not quite comfortable stacking all of them in your browser window.

Yoono.deb helps you get out of this situation by bringing all the popular social networks at one place. We have reviewed the Yoono Firefox plugin earlier but if you want a dedicated desktop client, try the Yoono desktop.

Setting Up Yoono and Connecting Your Social Networks

After you have downloaded and installed the Yoono Desktop, start the program and click the social network icon which you want to add in the client.

Add social networking account in the Yoono Desktop

For the sake of this article, I will be adding my Twitter account and show you the entire process of authorizing Yoono to show updates from my Twitter profile. As soon as you click the Twitter icon, a new sidebar pops out of the client. This is called the Yoono browser – which opens web pages and links clicked from the Yoono desktop client.

Sign in to Twitter with your Twitter username and password and this will authorize Yoono to fetch the Twitter updates in the client.

Click Finish and you are done. You have successfully added Twitter and can follow the same procedure to add Facebook, Flickr, Friendfeed and your AIM or Gtalk accounts. Please note that the Yoono browser can not be used to open custom web pages, links because there is no address bar. This browser window will open only those pages required by Yoono to complete the set up process.

To add other social networking accounts, click the wrench icon placed at the top of the Yoono window and select “Add Social Network/IM”.

Add more social accounts in Yoono Desktop

Customizing Yoono Desktop

Once all your social profiles are connected, you can start customizing the client according to your need.

Turn On/ Off desktop notifications

You can configure the client to show live desktop pop ups as and when they appear. Yoono will show you aggregated desktop alerts after a specified time interval set by you. The desktop alerts can also be accompanied by a sound notification and you can “snooze” notifications for a particular time interval.

To manage desktop alerts and notifications, go to “Options -> Popup alerts” and configure the required settings.

Configure notification settings Yoono desktop

Reading your profile Timeline

Yoono makes it very easy to read Twitter updates and Facebook status messages. When you click a link, the resulting web page is opened in the Yoono browser window.

Read updates and web links in Yoono desktop

Reading your Friends Updates and News feed

Yoono Desktop provides 4 tabs to read profile updates. The first tab contains all the updates from your friends. The second tab shows you which of your friends are online right now. The third tab shows the direct messages sent to you while the fourth tab shows other important notifications.

Sharing Messages, web pages, links and Uploading photos

To upload a photo from your computer to one of your Facebook albums, click “Upload photo” link in the main Yoono window. You can also receive event notifications, invite friends to an event and chat with friends right from the Yoono Window.

Organizing Timelines in Columns

Like Seesmic desktop and Tweetdeck, Yoono has support for columns and you can customize what appears in a particular column. Having said that, it would be more productive to add Facebook stream in one column, Twitter updates in another and the Flickr photostream in another column rather than messing them up in the single default column.

Set columns to read updates in the desktop client

To add columns in the client, click the columns button and choose what you want to show in a column. All the columns are restored and thus you need not add columns all the way every time you start the client.

On the ending note, I would say Yoono is the social networking client of the hour. It’s very easy and friendly to use and can be customized without much effort. You can manage the most popular social networks at one place, upload photos at Facebook, read Twitter updates, upload photos to Flickr, chat with AIM buddies. Do you need anything more?

Which desktop client do you use to manage your social networking accounts? Do you think they make your work easier? Let us know your ideas in the comments section