Under the Social Media Radar: Soup.io
In a Tumblr and Twitter dominated world, microblogging service Soup.io has mostly flown under the radar of social media obsession. But the site can be truly useful and certainly worth a little exploration.
I’d discuss in detail the list of features Soup.io offers, but it would sound an awful lot like a post about Tumblr. I’ll give you bullet points, though, to prove it:
- Soup.io allows you to publish content quickly like an ultra-convenient blog.
- Soup.io has built-in functions for handling text blocks, photos, videos, links, and quotes as post types.
- Soup.io allows you to befriend other users and publishes your friends’ posts on one page you can check for updates.
- Soup.io places all updates on the front page of the site, so the front page becomes an interesting time line.
- Soup.io can import RSS feeds and track your activities across other social networking sites.
It’s the last feature on the list that got my attention most with Soup.io, and this is why I’ve come to consider it the unsung hero of microblogging. I use my Soup primarily to keep track of my blogging and social networking activities.
I have my Soup set to automatically import the RSS feed of my blog plus import a list of all my activity on YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Plurk, and other social networking/bookmarking sites. The end result is that I have a nice, neat Soup that lets me store all the links to my social media efforts in one easy to reference place. Sure, if I want the actual dugg URL (as in the URL Digg creates) for something I’ve submitted, I can go to Digg’s site and find it in my profile. But I can hop right onto my Soup and copy the link from there, while at the same time glancing at my Twitter feed and making sure that my latest blog post propagated through RSS successfully. And, if I get bored, I can use the Soup “TV” feature to watch the videos I’ve favorited on YouTube in full screen mode, right on the Soup site.
My Soup is a snapshot of my social media life, plain and simple. And that is, to me, the greatest thing Soup.io has to offer, though it is certainly not the only thing. It’s very satisfying to update your microblog on Soup.com, and if you’re a fan of Tumblr you’ll love the experience. You’ll also find some very cool content posted by other Soup users, so the social side of things is rewarding, too. You can certainly use your Soup as a proper microblog, or you can use it to both microblog and track your social media endeavors, making it a hybrid of its traditional use and the use I’ve discovered.
You can visit & explore Soup.io at www.Soup.io.
