Streamified is a social media client for iOS, giving you an all-in-one overview of all your networks, plus RSS and blog feeds from elsewhere. The aim is to simplify everything, but in testing it can become a bit overwhelming.
The list of feeds you can add is very long. Not that it looks it – tap the “Add feed” button and you see a small box showing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Readability, and no visible scrollbar. Try scrolling anyway, because there are many more options hidden further down the list.
Many, many more. You can add your Google Reader account, any Pinterest feed that takes your fancy, Reddit, the Daily Puppy, headlines from Wired, and others. There are many categories, but often only a couple of options within each one.
Your feeds are displayed as scrollable columns, separated by source. There’s also an “All Streams” feed that combines content from all the others.
Once stocked up with feeds, Streamified updates itself with new posts and content. Every one of them is displayed on a little card, which has some controls visible (reply and retweet for Twitter posts, Like for Facebook ones), and more controls accessible via a tap. Adding lots of feeds starts to make things feel too much; the App Streams feed never stops moving, which soon becomes quite distracting.
It could do with some more polish, though. There are signs that things got rushed during the development of this app. Text and controls don’t always line up neatly; text labels sometimes drift off the edges of the objects they adorn. On top of that, there are some performance issues. We found the app was sometimes very slow to update or respond to touches, and also saw occasional crashes.
Your approach to an app like this is going to depend a lot on your approach to social media in general. If you live for Twitter and Facebook, and like nothing better than spending all your time there, it could be handy to have everything in one place.
But there’s also an argument for doing things well, and personally speaking, that’s how I’d like to manage my social media. Twitter’s good for reaching some people, Facebook is good for reaching others. I’d prefer to use a dedicated app for each, one that is built to handle just that one network and do so well.
Streamified is free, and has some potential for social networking addicts. Since it updates live, it might make a useful networking console, set up and left running alongside the work you’re supposed to be doing on another computer.
But the current version needs some work on performance and visual presentation, both of which could be improved.
Pro: Free. All your internet stuff in one place.
Con: Slow, could do with some more work.
