[Reviews] Alternion – AIO Social & Email Aggregator

• Design
• Features
• Connectivity
• Ease Of Use

Online marketers are among the busiest kinds of power users; with a huge sum of their work actually hotwired into the social Web itself. And aside from the regular Facebook and Twitter usage, marketers may also need to deal with hundreds of niche social networks that cater to specific markets, fields of interests, and even regions of the world. Not to mention the numerous email accounts associated with each site that a webmaster runs.

There are a number of solutions around for dealing with multiple accounts. Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are popular for dealing with both Facebook and Twitter, and Threadsy is great for viewing your emails and social media sites at once.

Alternion is a free, feature-rich social media aggregator that pulls in social networks and e-mail, and presents these in organized feeds on a straightforward interface. As a social media aggregator and communications tool, you can view, manage and post on your social media sites, and send e-mails without leaving your Alternion profile page.

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As of writing, the service aggregates more than 200 social media services including today’s most popular ones, and a good selection of niche pages. The selection includes your usual generic social networking sites, blogging platforms, multimedia sites, and news bookmarking tools, as well as networks that cater to specific fields of interests like movies and TV, gaming, travel, shopping, and books.

The e-mail feature, on the other hand, allows you to hook Alternion up with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Live Mail, AOL Mail, and just about any IMAP/POP-based e-mail application.

The site itself is a social network, allowing you to connect to other users, send direct messages to each other, and join communities. And like all social networks, you can personalize your profile page with a bio, a user image, and even customize the look of your profile page—the color scheme, and you can even include a background image.

Essentially, it’s a one-stop-shop for your online life.
While Threadsy offers your social media steam as a column on the right next to your emails, Alternion has tabs for your emails and social services. You can also use the Contacts tab to search for your friends, across all the social networks. Click on their name and you can check out their profile.

It carries the generic paneled layout though, so usage is pretty idiot-proof. At the onset, the news feed will present you with a mashup of all the updates and latest posts scraped off from all your networks. You can filter through them by content type like Status Updates, Links, Blogs, Comments, as well as Photos, Videos, and Audio.

Here’s a quick overview of the service.

Pros

• Access to hundreds of services
• Email and social media integration
• Personalised theme
• Social Address book

Cons

• Occasionally slow to update social media streams and emails
• No Facebook Pages support yet (though the help pages would suggest this is coming, along with mobile and iPad apps)
• Some services are currently only one-way, meaning you can only view your activities, and not the ones of your friends.

Here is a small gallery:

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Though it’s still in Beta, Alternion’s current crop of features makes it a great tool for users looking to maximize their time while boosting the follower engagements, content distribution, and messaging aspects of their social media campaigns. And just like any Web 2.0 product, it’ll most likely be in constant development even past Beta, so we can definitely expect a handful of enhancements and new features in the future. You can sign up to the beta list or get a beta account by liking their facebook page and requesting for an account.

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So how do you keep on top of all your online profiles?

[Disclaimer]PS: I am in no way associated with Alternion.com and this is not a paid review. Please use the service at your own risk.