8hands: Almost perfect desktop client for all your social networks

Filed under: Windows, Freeware, Social Software, Beta

8hands: Almost perfect desktop client for all your social networks

by Brad Linder Jan 11th 2008

Ever wish you didn't have to visit 20 different web sites to keep up with your friends on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter? 8hands has you covered.

8hands is a desktop client that displays all the latest updates from all of those sites as well as media updates from your YouTube and Flickr contacts. All you have to do is download and install 8hands and you'll almost never need to visit a web page to keep up with all of the latest news from your friends. If you want to hit up one of those web sites though, all you have to do is click the icon for the service you want to visit and 8hands will pull up a web browser.

8hands is also a fairly competent replacement for desktop Twitter clients like Snitter and Twitterific. The client displays all the latest tweets from your friends in an optional pop up window. And you can send out tweets by changing your status line, although there's no easy way to reply to a tweet by clicking on it and there's no tinyurl integration.

If your friends sign up for 8hands accounts, you can also use the software as a chat client, sort of like Social.im.

There are a few problems with 8hands. While Facebook is officially supported, we were unable to associate a Facebook account with 8hands. And there's no support for Friendster or several other popular social networks. But Friendster, Bebo, Last.fm and Xango support are listed as coming soon. And while 8hands is Windows only right now, Mac support is also in the works.

For a public alpha, 8hands is already a pretty darn good solution for anyone who spends all day logged into multiple social networking sites.

Tags: 8hands, facebook, friendster, myspace, snitter, twitter, twitterific

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Todd said 12:42PM on 1-11-2008

I downloaded the local client ( Yuck right off the bat, why does it have to be a local install? ) and the first thing it wanted was my username and password to all my accounts ( Flickr, Twitter, Myspace, etc. )...a phishing nightmare.

The timing of this is odd, just as every tech blog's front page is covered with news of oAuth, Open ID, and Portable Data, they release 8hands. Suspicious.

Brad Linder said 1:02PM on 1-11-2008

Actually it's been around for a few months, but I've been too busy to try it out until now. As for the password information, i like to think of 8hands as sort of Pidgin for social networks. In order to use Pidgin or Trillian to communicate with your AIM/MSN/Yahoo/Gtalk contacts, of course you need to enter your passwords for those networks.

Hopefully one day you'll be able to use OpenID to login to each network, and you'll only need to give Pidgin, Trillian, 8hands, or other multi-service applications your OpenID info as well. But we're not there yet.

Jade said 9:41AM on 1-12-2008

I've just finished installing the app and I love it.
Didn't seem to have any problems adding my Facebook account, which is great cause it's my most active social network.
Thanks Download Squad!!

michael said 3:13PM on 1-12-2008

The funny thing is, is how social are you in real life, if you have a bunch of 'social networks' on the Internet?

I would think you really wouldn't be socially connected to the real world that much if you're on the computer managing these networks all the time. :)

Jason Benway said 9:01PM on 1-12-2008

sounds like http://www.spokeo.com but Spokeo is a web application.

stv said 9:05PM on 1-12-2008

Brad,
can you pls help me understand if this is a better solution than Flock is? I'm using Flock and I'm pretty happy with the level of aggregation I get. Is there something in your opinion that 8hands can do that Flock can not and that you believe is something that should not be missing in a "social netework client"?
Thx
stv

Pete said 9:53AM on 1-13-2008

Hey stv,
Though my name is not Brad, I figured I can still answer this one.
See, I used to be a Flock user, so I can truly understand your conflict.
there are several features of 8hands that are missing in Flock and vice versa, so ultimately there is more than one answer to this question.
The main reason I chose 8hands over Flock is the notifications. with 8hands, you get notifications all the time, even when your browser is closed.
For me, it's really important. I use my computer for other things besides surfing, and when I'm working or even watching a movie, I'd still like to be notified if something new is up.
Other than that, there's an IM option to chat with friends and a ranked list of them based on amount of communication, which is pretty cool.
I guess you should just give it a shot and see what's better for your needs.
cheers,
Pete.

Alon said 9:54AM on 1-13-2008

Thanks a lot for this wonderful review! We were really glad to see you enjoyed 8hands, what can we say… we love you too :)

As you know, we are still in an alpha stage and we have a lot of plans for 8hands, so you can be sure that we will only get better and better with time – among other things, we will support more networks, more platforms and will have better performance.

What I should mention that wasn't in the review is our "Top Friends" mechanism, that lets you know who are your "real top friends" in all of your social networks, meaning who you communicate with the most. Soon, we will expand this feature, along with many other surprises that will happen in 2008.

I want to answer a couple of the comments here… first I want to let Todd know that he shouldn't worry. At 8hands we take privacy issues very seriously. We don't give away information or mess around with spyware or adware, and of course - there is no phishing involved. We are here to make your online life better, that's all there is to it.

Now… to stv – in my opinion, 8hands and Flock are completely different! Personally, my browser isn't always open – sometimes I'm working, writing, playing and using many kinds of apps, but I always want to stay in the know and get notifications of new flickr, facebook, youtube or myspace events. With 8hands it's all going on in the background. Plus, 8hands supports events that Flock won't. Beside that, I love my Firefox the way it is. But as I said, that's just me…

Again, thanks you all for checking out 8hands, and for every question you may have, don't hesitate to ask me.

Alon,
The 8hands Mega-Team

stv said 5:50PM on 1-13-2008

@Pete
thx for your explanation - stv

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