A Quick Look at Threadsy

I’ve been playing around with a new (to me) “integrated communications” client. It centralizes your twitter, Facebook and chat all from one web application. As they say,

threadsy groups all of your inbound email and social network messages into a single inbox and all of your Facebook news feed and tweets into a single stream. More than simply aggregating information, threadsy integrates the services to provide deep context on the people you communicate with.

And you know what, it does just that. Is it perfect yet? Nope. But it is pretty interesting to use and shows quite a bit of promise.

The main interface is divided into 2 columns that they call “inbound” and “unbound.” Inbound has email and any twitter or Facebook things aimed directly at you. Unbound is everything else. Inbound is also the wider column of the two.

While looking at a message from someone you can click their icon. The Unbound column will switch to the “People” tab and you’ll get as much info on that person as is available. I honestly don’t know where it all comes from, but it can be rather eerie with the completeness… For example, here’s a slice from my info:

Look at all those little site/profile icons up there! I’m not sure where it all comes from, but it is kinda cool to see it for people I follow.

I haven’t experimented much with the chat portion yet. I did notice that meebo was an option so I’ve gone as far as to login to my meebo account – from there I get Facebook chat, Google talk, Windows Live, AIM, etc. Seems to work well.

What’s missing? Definitely needs support for Twitter lists (related Get Satisfaction thread). I have a lot of folks in lists – I don’t follow them directly, I just check the list activity from time to time. Can’t see any of them in threadsy and that’s a bummer.

Here’s a little email tip: I have some filters set up so that some messages never show up in my Gmail inbox. They go straight to a label. Took me a while to figure out how to find stuff not in the inbox (which is what is shown by default).

Just click the “More” tab and then navigate down to the label you want and you’ll get a new tab with just that content. Works if you just want to see one email inbox too. Kinda handy, but I wish the added tabs persisted… they go away as soon as you click back to the Inbound tab.

I see a lot of potential with threadsy and I’m curious to see how it grows and develops over time. If you’re curious, try this invite link – I think it is good for 10 invitations — and add a comment below with your thoughts or impressions.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Threadsy Public Beta