App of the Week: MySocialMania

It doesn't get much easier than this.

Mania seems to be an appropriate word when discussing the crazed use of social media by millions worldwide. From Twitter to Facebook to Flickr to MySpace (God help us), millions of people post millions of messages, photos, videos and links across dozens of social media platforms every day.

With all these choices come a myriad of websites and applications designed to improve the user experience and make it easier to post photos of the burger you had for lunch or to tell everyone just how great you feel after jogging five miles in the heat. As important as all this information clearly is, it can truly be daunting to figure out just how to get those thoughts out of your brain and into cyberspace. MySocialMania wants to help.

MySocialMania is a remarkably simple app for the iPhone that gives users access to multiple social networking platforms through a single, easy-to-use interface.

Once logged in, the settings tab provides a list of all the different social networking sites and a quick slide of the on/off switch brings up the login screen for whichever network is chosen. After entering a user name and password, the site is verified and the home button provides options for posting a message or a blog (if you enable Tumblr, Blogger or Wordpress) as well as sharing a photo or video.

The interface is about the least confusing interface I've ever used, which is great, but there are some drawbacks.

First, there are only 13 social media sites available. While all the usual suspects -- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr -- are there and a couple surprising additions -- LinkedIn and Multiply -- many others are not. None of the location-based apps like Foursquare are included in the app, for example.

Also, there is no question use of a Twitter app is just easier and provides a ton more features than this stripped-down message poster does. It's certainly handy for quickly sending media to sites like YouTube or Flickr, but some of the others don't make a lot of sense.

I'm still dubious when it comes to blogging via phone. Tumblr, with its short bursts of information, sure, but Blogger and Wordpress are built for relatively wordy posts; not something you would normally do on a tiny smart phone keyboard.

One last little quibble: The app only allows two logins each for Twitter and Facebook. And make sure, if you are going to do multiple logins, to do that BEFORE you create your first. I found out the hard way that if you create one login and decide to add a second, but change your mind, the app wipes out your settings and forces you to re-enter your login information and verify your account.

This app seems best suited to people who don't want a lot of frills and post sparingly on multiple networks. If that sounds like you, this app is probably perfect for you. For more advanced users, MySocialMania, while decent, will fall well short of your daily needs.