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.

The service is web-based, but also available as an application that runs on Adobe’s new AIR runtime environment. This is available for both Mac and Windows. The application is at the alpha stage of its development and is already pretty stable, but needs a few last kinks ironed-out. For example, in the Mac version, if you click on the x button the application continues to run, but can not be maximised again.

For the moment Pownce is available by invite only. I have some invites left, so anyone who would like to try the service is welcome to leave a comment on this story and I’ll mail them off on a first come, first served basis.

I am finding the service to be quite useful, especially in replacing email as a way of sending stuff to friends. For example, when I come across an interesting link I can just paste it into Pownce and share it immediately, instead of sending an email to all my friends, who’s addresses I need to hack into the ‘to’ field, or via a mailing list that needs to be maintained. Plus, people don’t always appreciate receiving that kind of mail, while Pownce users are intrinsically in it for that sort of social networking.

All in all, the service is useful but needs a little work. It already beats the hell out of emailing stuff to your friends, however.