EventBox: The Social Tool That Does Too Much?

Yes, life in the 21st century is busy. Very busy. I have three toddlers and work at home. I know busy. What I don’t have is a social life.

Well, there’s Twitter. But it’s a fad so I’m not likely to get too caught up in social networks online. Unless, there was a way to, you know, touch bases everywhere from one place. My Mac.

The problem with social networking online has as much to do with time as convenience. I have Facebook. Twitter. Flickr. And I subscribe to a few hundred RSS files (despite RSS falling out of favor of the masses, in favor of micro-blogging).

I only have 24 hours in a day, and with sleep, eating, work, my kids and my husband 32 of those hours are already accounted for. Is it any wonder I’m cranky? And as cranky as I am is it any wonder I have little social life, other than reading about other people’s lives online?

The Cosmic Machine invented utilities like EventBox for people just like me, only 15 years younger, and new to all this.

EventBox tries to be the jack-of-all-trades and replace the one, two, or 14 utilities that help to keep us in a social mood.

EventBox connects you to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, Digg, Reddit, RSS feeds and other stuff I have yet to figure out the value (though I’m still struggling with the value of the aforementioned ways to socialize online).

One utility. Many functions. Think of EventBox as Flock the social web browser without the browser. And email. We all know that Swiss Army Knife utilities become passe as soon as they add email.

As cool as EventBox is, and as nifty as the thought of having a single utility do so much can be, in reality, what it does collectively isn’t as good as what I already have individually. It tries to do too much and ends up looking good but not becoming my friend.

For example, I tried a few Twitter utilities late last year, and settled on Twitterific. Is EventBox’s handling of Twitter and tweets as good as Twitterific? No. In fact, Twitterific isn’t as enjoyable as Tweetie, which I use now, Mac and iPhone.

Does EventBox bring anything special to Flickr, or Facebook? Uh, well, I want it to. But it doesn’t. Safari actually works well for both, though dedicated utilities also exist. RSS? Same problem. EventBox doesn’t do anything like what I get from NetNewsWire.

Don’t miss my perspective on this. I would not mind having a single utility do so much, so long as it did all that much with the ease and comfort of what I get from what I’m already using.

The fact that it’s one utility vs. eight or 10 utilities doesn’t matter much because my learning curve on those has already passed.

If you’re new to the online social scene, new to Twitter, or Facebook, or Flickr, et al, and that’s all you know, then you’re likely to love EventBox. The problem is that I just can’t help but think EventBox is the 21st century version of AOL.

EventBox provides a walled community like AOL was back in the last century. The internet was wild, open, free, and constantly changing. Change. My online social habits change, too, and I need either a utility that changes with it (my browser), or I’ll stick with best of class and pick and choose what I need to use and where.

EventBox might be just what you need if that’s all you need. If you need more then you’ll be checking out other online social utilities and blending, mixing, matching features and functions to fit your changing needs.