How To: Update Your Status Messages Across Multiple Social Networks

Ping.fm is a service I have been using for quite some time now.  The idea of the service is simple – update your status message on every social network you are a part of.  No longer do you have to manually login to each user account and update your status at each individual site, which as I’m sure many people know can be a pain staking task.  Ping.fm will allow you to setup all of your social network accounts via the Ping.fm dashboard (you need to create an account at Ping.fm first) including (but not limited to) Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Google Talk Status, AIM Status, and Friendfeed.  That is only a small fraction of the supported networks, a full list can be found here.

In addition to Ping.fm’s web interface, you can configure desktop and mobile applications to work with your Ping.fm account.  You can find which applications will work with Ping.fm here.  It’s also worth mentioning, you can update Ping.fm via email or various other plugins for things like Windows Live Messenger or Skype or even widgets for your iGoogle homepage.

Recently, Ping.fm launched link tracking ability that works in conjunction with their URL shortening service.  This is an opt-in feature which is useful for people who post content (such as myself) and want to see how many people are actually clicking the links.  You can find more information on link tracking here.  The service is very simple to use, however, it does offer a lot of functionality that you may not realize right away without reading their documentation.  I would recommend you check out their posting tips documentation for some useful tips and advice on how to use the service most effectively.