Cool Developments in Social Networking

As even us 30-somethings have come to accept social networking as part of our lives, here are a couple ways to keep your social platforms organized and one way that social networking is helping promote social justice...

Yoono
This browser add-on adds a sidebar where you can keep tabs on tweets, Facebook status updates, RSS feeds, instant messages and just about anything else you'd want handy. Eminently configurable, it's truly the all-in-one tool for your info-junkie fix.

TweetDeck
This Adobe Air app (currently in Beta) helps you organize all your Twitter activity, grouping tweets from various groups of people you're following so they don't all just get dumped into a single category. Prioritizing tweets is a way to make Twitter useful instead of overwhelming.

ushahidi
For many people, social networking platforms are simply a cool way to virtually keep up with friends' relationship statuses. But ushahidi (which means "testimony" in Swahili) is a site that allows people in wartorn regions like the Democratic Republic of Congo to report crisis information via text messaging through a mobile phone or web connection. It was first launched during the post-election violence in Kenya. It's citizen journalism at its best and makes SuperPoking seem that much sillier.