Yoono is an app that congregates social media updates from many sources into a single column for easy viewing and updating. This is the free Firefox browser add-on version, which integrates Yoono functionality directly into the left side of the browser window, as well as updating in the form of pop-ups. It’s nice to have that integration so that you can focus on more important Web sites, instead of constantly hitting reload on twitter.com, for example. Yoono also has a free desktop version for those who want to keep their browser clutter-free.
Setup is simple: just give Yoono your login info for all the social media sites you prefer, then watch the updates fly. You can choose an integrated tab, or tabs focusing on each social media specifically. You can also look at inboxes, reply to comments, and so on.
One criticism of Yoono’s browser add-on is that while it’s activated, it takes up an enormous amount of real estate on the Firefox screen. With resolution at 1280 x 1024, Yoono takes up nearly a quarter of the width of the left side of the screen. There’s an easily identifiable arrow in the upper left that minimizes Yoono, but it still takes up an inch of width. I wish there were a way to completely minimize it without exiting Yoono completely.
Whether Yoono Firefox Browser Add-on is minimized or not, it defaults to giving you updates as small pop-up windows in the lower right of your screen. These are highly useful as they only stay visible for a minute and then let you get back to what you were doing – until the next message appears, of course. It’s actually less distracting for a business user to have Yoono minimized and just glance at the updates, rather than expand out Yoono and scroll down. The latter is useful for re-reading something you missed while actually doing work, of course.
Yoono has everything in a single column. In the desktop version, this is a weakness, but for the browser add-on, I prefer it this way. Yoono takes up a lot of width as it is, so multiple columns might make it hard to use Firefox normally. Power social media users and business users who don’t want to visit a lot of Web sites during their workday will find Yoono’s desktop version useful, and those who don’t want a whole lot of extra apps open will find Yoono Firefox Browser Add-on highly useful.