What is the problem with having an account on MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Pownce ect? You have to update each account manually, one by one. Thank goodness Ping.fm is around to take the hassle out of individually updating your status on these social networking, publishing platforms.
Ping.fm is a service which makes updating your social networks a breeze. You can update your status from anywhere using AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, WAP, iPhone, SMS and E-mail. So far, the services Ping.fm supports are Xanga, Plurk, Plaxo, MySpace, LiveJournal, LinkedIn, hi5, facebook, brightkite, blogger, bebo, twitter, tumblr, pownce, Mashable and Jaiku. This pretty much covers the gamut in terms of popular social networks/publishing platforms right now.
The service is currently in beta, but if you would like to signup and give it a try, use the beta code “tastyping” and this will allow you to create an account.
Once inside Ping.fm, you’ll see a list of social services. In order to automatically ping these services through Ping.fm, you’ll need to setup each individual account. This mostly consists of typing in your username and password for each service. While setting up your account, you can choose whether to use that specific service for Status updates for for micro blogging.
According to Ping.fm,
Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and LinkedIn do status. If you are using these services, you should be doing status updates.
If you were using blogger, livejournal, pownce, and tumblr, you would be doing a microblog.
It is very unlikely you would want to send the exact same message to a microblog and a status service. Even if you wanted to update both, the wording of the message should be different.
Ping.fm also has something called a Trigger system. The trigger system gives you the ability to post to specific services without broadcasting to all of them at once. When crafting your message within the Ping.fm web interface, keep these triggers in mind:
@s message – Posts a status update
@b title^body – Posts a blog
@m message – Posts a micro-blog
If you are posting a blog, be sure to include the ^ seperator in your message or it won’t be delivered to your blogging services.
As far as links go, if you don’t want your links shortened, you can put a * before the link. Links shorter than 20 characters will not be shortened no matter how hard you try.
When testing out the service using my Twitter account, I noticed it took at least 60 seconds for the post to show up. However, once the Ping.fm queue was processed, the message showed up within Twitter with no problem.
For those of you with multiple social networking accounts, this service is most likely a god send. The Ping.fm team has vowed to continue to add support for new services as they become popular. A good example of this development is their recent added support for Plurk and MyMashable. Considering you can configure a number of different tools to post updates, keeping everything synched up between the different sites and services should no longer be a problem. Excellent tool to use if you are a blogger with a substantial social networking profile.
8 thoughts on “Ping.fm Ping Many Services With One”
I just installed ping.fm’s PingPressFM plugin in a self hosted wordpress site. API key, PHP version and CURL module have been verified.
I am stuck at setting the “trigger”. Under the “Current Trigger”, clicking the drop down arrow gives me two choices:
“(Off) undefined (@undefined)”
“—Create New Trigger”
I chose “—Create New Trigger” and checked “Trigger is active” box, accepted the remaining defaults, and clicked “Create Trigger”, and then saved it by clicking “Update Options” button.
Now I get an error that says, “None of your triggers are active!” …
Can any one help me here … please … I tried emailing the developer, but no reply so far.
Please help. Thank you.
I just installed ping.fm’s PingPressFM plugin in a self hosted wordpress site. API key, PHP version and CURL module have been verified.
I am stuck at setting the “trigger”. Under the “Current Trigger”, clicking the drop down arrow gives me two choices:
“(Off) undefined (@undefined)”
“—Create New Trigger”
I chose “—Create New Trigger” and checked “Trigger is active” box, accepted the remaining defaults, and clicked “Create Trigger”, and then saved it by clicking “Update Options” button.
Now I get an error that says, “None of your triggers are active!” …
Can any one help me here … please … I tried emailing the developer, but no reply so far.
Please help. Thank you.
Sorry to rain on everyone’s parade, but I set up all of my accounts through Ping.fm and gave it a try. In short, Ping.fm is worthless. After checking about ten accounts to see if it worked, I found nothing and gave up. Don’t waste your time with Ping.fm.
Little surprised that you find the 60 seconds wait okay.
Nur noch einmal steigt der Superboxer Oscar de La Hoya in den Ring, Noch einmal will er boxen und seinen Fans zeigen wer der beste Boxer aller Zeiten ist.
There are several services that allow for pinging to social media sites, but not one includes them all. You still have to manually update one here and there. Hopefully this one is more comprehensive. Thanxs for the tip and Beta invite.
Missy is an avid blogger, who writes (and manages) her small blog network: Groovy Vegetarian, Groovy Chicago, and Groovy Entrepreneur.
You can also find her daily contributing to green blog, Keetsa.
You’re quite welcome JD. Wish I would of known about this service when I went crazy with Web 2.0.
Thanks for posting! Great content and a pretty nice overview. I will have to check it out.
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