A few weeks ago I posted about Flock – a browser based on the Mozille engine (like Firefox) that mashes up your social networks. Flock does a decent job but still needs lots of work and I found that it was pretty bad with keeping Twitter updated. This, of course, could have more to do with Twitter’s recent server overloads than Flock as such. Nevertheless, while Flock came close, it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

I also tried Mugshot from Red Hat – but Mugshot is better at showing other people what you’re up to on all your social networks, not the other way around.

I still need something that allows me to mash-up my friend’s feeds from the various networks, so that I can view them all in one place. I’m hoping that a future release of Flock will answer that requirement.

But for posting to all of my networks what I need is a way to ‘carpet bomb’ them all with my updates.

Enter Ping.fm. This new service collects your credentials for each social network you subscribe to and then allows you to use a range of web applications or your instant messenger to jet out messages to all of them.

Ping.fm is currently in beta testing, but if you write to the developers they will send you a promo code to get you started. I have a code that I will send you if you drop me a mail. If you’re a social networking whore like me then it’s probably worth checking out.

Flock is based on the Mozilla engine (like Firefox) and has added functionality that is compatible with web applications such as Flickr, Blogger and the other services I mentioned above. It then incorporates these into its interface with a dynamic sidebar that allows you to communicate with friends, blog, post to Twitter, share media and conduct a myriad other activities from the browser panel. It also has a ‘My World’ sidebar display that offers you updates from all of your social networks and applications in one, unified space.

While Flock is still a little buggy at time of writing, it is definitely stable enough for daily use. This browser is my killer app at the moment. Simply awesome. And the best part of it is I don’t need to waste time using third party applications that interface with my favorite online applications – I have everything I need, right in my browser.