SocialVisor is an interesting free application that helps you track both Twitter as well as Facebook updates together. I have already reviewed a few such applications, like, Twigether, TweetDeck, and Brizzly. However, SocialVisor is completely different from all of these. It basically sits on top part of your screen, and keeps on showing you live updates from both your Twitter as well as Facebook accounts.
This makes it really useful for those who want to keep a contract track of updates happening on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. However, if it is disrupting you in your activity, then you can easily turn off this bar, and focus on your work. SocialVisor comes with all the required features, like retweets, mentions, and threaded conversations. I think SocialVisor is a really cool way to keep track of your up to the minute updates.
SocialVisor is built on Adobe Air, so it is a truly cross platform application. SocialVisor is completely free, and fun to use. It is still in beta, so you might come across a few bugs – but nothing serious to stop you from using this application.
While researching about this application, I was able to get hold of Alon Tamir, the guy behind SocialVisor. So, I thought it would be really cool to do a small interview of him, and publish it here. I am sure you will enjoy it.
Interview with Alon Tamir – Founder of SocialVisor
Ishan : Tell us something about the application.
Alon: SocialVisor is a new client for the popular social networks, Twitter and Facebook. Unlike other popular clients, SocialVisor is extremely slim and operates much like a news or Stock Ticker. It runs in an ambient fashion docked at the top or bottom of your monitor, allowing you to perform work or whatever else you enjoy doing on the computer, besides being addicted to social updates from your network of choice.
Ishan : What motivated you to create this application?
Alon: The realization that my work day was interrupted every time I wished to check my friends’ latest tweets or facebook updates. Our fully functional application is built in Adobe Air, so it’s cross platform and simply puts more emphasis on minimising the physical footprint the client has on valuable screen space. We’ve included such crucial functionalities such as emailing updates directly from the client, a timesaver for people who cannot read inane articles from work or for people who enjoy sharing the latest cute baby video with their non-socially connected friends, and splitting up tweets into two, so the more verbose users can cheat with the 140 character cap, among many others.
Ishan : How much time did it take you to come out with the first version of this application?
Alon: 6 months
Ishan : Who are your targeted users for this application?
Alon: People who actually have day jobs (I think there are a few of us out there!), and need to be productive and ‘get stuff done’, but who still want to keep up with their twitter and facebook friends. Our application allows both of these worlds to live comfortably on a single screen, viewable at all times.
Ishan : Do you intend to keep this application updated with latest Twitter and Facebook API changes?
Alon: Absolutely. We’re already hard at work on enhancing current functionalities and implementing updates that make the most of facebook and twitter API improvements. This is something that we will continue to do all that time, and is a primary focus of our team.
Ishan : I did not see any advertising on your website. So, do you plan to release a premium version in future to get some revenue from this application?
Alon:Twitter photos and facebook photo albums are viewed right within socialvisor, and we’ve built in some very low profile ads that appear within this photo viewing area of socialvisor.
Ishan : Tell us something about yourself.
Alon:I’m a serial entrepreneur, passionate about interface design, and get a lot of inspiration from real world architecture. It’s not just about providing solutions, but rather elegent solutions that inspire while providing real world utility and improvement. I keep that at the centre of everything I set out to do.
Ishan : What other cool stuff have you created apart from this application?
Alon: I’m also the founder/creator of Intelemail (www.intelemail.com) which is an email marketing competitive intelligence and benchmarking application used by leading email marketers worldwide.