Flock and Zemanta Target Time-Savvy Social Media Fans

Image via Wikipedia

About 2 or 3 months ago I tried Flock, a Firefox browser that's turned into a real complement to my social media routine.  Flock is targeted for social media fans and helps me (at least) take a quick scan of all the social media without having it suck all my time.  

Then there's Zemanta.  I first read about Zemanta about a year ago.  It's an invaluable browsing tool for people who write blogs but struggle to create as many links as they could or should – Zemanta takes care of all that by suggesting pictures, links and related articles.

This article is an example of Zemanta in use.  Up to this point, I've not added a single link.  At the bottom of my TypePad edit screen are already suggested links – I've just taken about a minute to take a look and add the ones I feel are appropriate.  Of course, I can add my own links just like I did before – but this certainly reduces my search time significantly.

The other nice benefit Zemanta offers is right here at the bottom of this post; suggested and related articles that you can read to support this story.  Normally, I would have put them as a link – but here they are.

One downside to Zemanta is that it ISN'T human.  That means that while it can recommend several sites to link to and pictures you might be interested in — it won't always have the best choices, you may still want to jump onto Google to search for better articles and blogs to link to.

This entire review and experience has shown me that no matter how entrenched a product can become (i.e. Microsoft Explorer) there is always room for innovation and improvement.  Like most wonderful new "inventions" Zemanta and Flock both came out of a real focus on the user experience and the desire to improve it.