As Twitter becomes infrastructure, and its features become well-known, it has become a challenge for third-party clients, like TweetDeck, Seesmic, HootSuite, Tweetie and others to separate from the pack. But a recent entrant, Brizzly, has a serious advantage that looks to be paying dividends. You see... the core team consists of Google refugees who left the Mountain View mothership after years of working on cool projects like Google Reader to try and continue innovating in a new space (much like Ev and Biz did when they left Blogger and eventually founded Twitter).

The team, properly called Thing Labs, also responsible for Plinky, has in a few months' time created a unique Web interface to Twitter that supports grouping, multiple accounts, inline multimedia and photo support. In addition, the site has also taken on a unique approach to managing the ever-popular trending topics from Twitter, and has an ace in the hole which lets you mute somebody who might be dominating your feed.

For the last six weeks, I have been using Brizzly, in addition to my monitoring Twitter through Seesmic's Web client, the company's standard interface, and wherever else Tweets may land - including FriendFeed and Facebook. And while there is no question the product is in its early stages, some of its major features are missing from competitive products.

Upon logging in, Brizzly leverages your Twitter credentials, using OAuth, to find your account data, including friends' updates, replies and direct messages. It also includes saved searches that you have enabled through Twitter.

These categories, including your direct messages in box and sent items, are on the left side of the screen. What's new, compared to the standard Twitter UI, is the addition of groups. You can make as many groups as you like, ensuring you don't miss updates from your real friends. For example, I have one called "Google Ecosystem" that's filled with current and former Googlers. This function is similar to Groups from TweetDeck, or Lists in FriendFeed. Seesmic, another Web client favorite of mine, doesn't yet support this feature.


Creating a New Group Called "Real World Friends" in Brizzly

My "Google Ecosystem" Group Displayed in Brizzly

The right side of the screen is where individual direct messages will appear, where you can view them or quiet them by clicking "Shh...". In addition, you can see trending topics, not just listed, but defined, by other Brizzly users. Think you can explain why Jay-Z is a trending topic? Just click "Why?: and put in a note.

The Brizzly team has taken steps to also make Twitter a little less text-centric. While Twitter continues to be limited by the number of characters people can send, and only showing text, Brizzly displays videos and photos from a variety of third-party sites in line. You can also post photos directly from Brizzly and have them hosted by Brizzly, with a dedicated page showing you how many views the photo got, along with your corresponding tweet.


One Image I Shared In Brizzly (and its stats)

Another Image Flowing Through My Brizzly Stream
A few weeks ago, I talked with the company's co-founder, Jason Shellen, for his thoughts on Brizzly, and what the team is trying to do in what's no doubt a very crowded space.

"We took a big bite out of the social Web with Google Reader. With Brizzly, our intent was to do some fun things with Twitter and see where that takes us," Shellen said. "Chris (Wetherell) and I come from a very social background, so we know that each community has its own flavor. With FriendFeed, the aggregation of all that stuff made its own community. We thought maybe what we can do is take you where you are in your community and give you better tools to manage that tool better. We are not trying to displace Twitter or Facebook, but make it a one stop shop with rich features on top."

Want to try those rich features, including the ability to retweet in line, and mute overtweeters? There are 250 invites, just for louisgray.com readers. Enter the code of daringbaking when you go to open an account at http://www.brizzly.com.

More than a year ago, we first talked about FriendBinder, which was one of many services offering lifestreaming capabilities, aggregating your information from different social networks, and letting you follow friends from each network in one place. It didn't have the polish of other sites, like FriendFeed, the high visibility of networks like Facebook, or the dollars behind it like Plaxo and MyBlogLog. But what it did offer was the ability to "tier" friends in terms of how interested you were in their updates, and to act as a console. But it wasn't open to everybody, until earlier this week, when developer Richard Cunningham finally opened the doors.


FriendBinder Pulls Updates from Around the Web (Interest Level: 5)
In the wake of FriendFeed's buyout from Facebook, and the siren's call that is Twitter, social networking users are no doubt reticent to invest time into "yet another network" or "yet another aggregator", especially as many of the aggregation functions that were once enough to launch a separate site are now being incorporated by the giants (see: Facebook). But FriendBinder has some interesting features worth taking a look at.


Comments and Likes from Facebook Are Streamed to FriendBinder
Since its initial release, FriendBinder has benefited from enhancements by some of the larger sites. By pulling in data from Facebook friends in FriendBinder, I can see comments and likes from within the site, and can even make comments to Facebook from within FriendBinder. In addition, Twitter replies and direct messages are displayed on the left side, in their own stream, letting me respond from within FriendBinder.


I Can Update My Twitter and Facebook Status from FriendBinder
Also, in parallel with Facebook and SocialToo both announcing ways for you to update your Facebook and Twitter followers simultaneously, this is something FriendBinder does as well.

FriendBinder's goal is not to be a social network. It doesn't have any native content owned by the service, nor does it have likes and comments or distinct connections on the service that make others social. But it does find all your friends' updates in one place, without requiring them to join. You can import your profiles from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr and Last.FM.

To check out FriendBinder, go to http://www.friendbinder.com.

SocialToo, a social Web utility aimed at enhancing your experience on Twitter, Facebook and other sites, is well known for its autofollowing capabilities. But with the rise of marketing and spam on some sites, Twitter especially, the noise has gotten out of control for some people - as you have seen a small number unfollow all their connections, in effect rebooting their accounts, and others complain mightily about the noise that has arisen from junk direct messages. With a new feature introduced today, SocialToo has made it very easy to stop those broadcasting junk into your stream with one click.

The new feature extends Twitter's capability of bringing direct messages to your e-mail, and adds options below to let you report the sender as spam, block them, or report them as sending automated direct messages. And unlike competitors, including Topify, it can be done without having to send this specific message to one of their dedicated e-mail addresses.

As an advisor to SocialToo, I often get access to some of the features early, and this enhancement has already paid dividends. Now, instead of just manually deleting the DM, I can click and send the person's annoyance away forever.



One DM via SocialToo I Was Ready to Zap

More than just this utility, SocialToo lets you set up a blacklist of keywords from within the site that you may never want to see in DMs, ever. That means you never have to see updates from Mafia Wars or Spymaster or whatever your least favorite junk spam of the week is. That can be found in your SocialToo account's preference tab here: http://socialtoo.com/twitter

If there is a way to communicate with people, spammers will do their part to find an exploit. SocialToo is trying to be part of the solution and helping to clean up your social networking experience.

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Disclosure: I am an advisor to SocialToo

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Twazzup, which initially launched as an alternative search engine for finding popular items on Twitter, has expanded its reach - first with the product offering customized versions of its page for specific events, charities, or even political movements, like the upheaval in Iran, and now, perhaps in stealth mode, the company is working on a channel called "Live", at http://live.twazzup.com/, which presents the most thorough profiles available for Twitter - a remarkable step ahead of the standard offering.

Twitter profiles are pretty vanilla. Everybody's Twitter profile (like mine here) shows your most recent tweets, a quick Web link and bio, and your following vs. follower counts. But looking at this page doesn't give much indication of who is getting engagement, who the person is influenced by, or outside of the last 20 tweets, what they tend to discuss.


My Live.Twazzup.com Profile
The new live.twazzup.com service, in contrast, focuses less on the numerics of one's profile, but what actually happens when they hit the send button. As you can see on my live.twazzup.com page, the service shows top keywords and hashtags I use, my most recent tweet, who influences me, where my last few links have headed, and most interestingly, a real-time results stream of people who have mentioned me on Twitter.


A Live.Twazzup.com Profile for @QueenOfSpain
The result is a very clean and informative way to see who is participating in the conversation with any individual, and what they are promoting in their link economy.

With the rise of spam bots and autofollow or auto-unfollow services, the total numbers are getting less important over time, in my opinion. Twazzup is looking beyond the numbers and showing us the bigger picture - delivering what I believe to be a more accurate profile of who we are on Twitter.

You can find your own Live Twazzup profile at http://live.twazzup.com/. Just add your user name.