The newest kid on the social media block - Meet Doddlr

So many social networks, so little time. Or tabs, as the case may be. Which is why social media dashboards, which allow users to control all their social media activity in one place, are becoming so popular among netizens.
And soon we’ll be seeing one more. Doddlr.com, the brainchild of two 17 year old schoolboys at Eton College in London.

Doddlr, which is currently connected to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Youtube,  can also be connected with multiple email accounts potentially making the dashboard a complete hub for all your online activity.
The service will be launched with India as a focal point. “Asia is the biggest frontier for any tech company and India is at the heart of it. It’s hard to find reasons not to launch in India,” said an official release from the company.
But will Indians go for it? We had a chance to play around with the site, and these are our first impressions:
Using Doddlr:

Logging on to Doddlr and creating an account is a simple and painless process. Simply enter an email id, pick a password and voila! you’re done!
You can almost immediately choose to connect one or all of your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Tumblr accounts on to the dashboard, and you will start immediately seeing feeds from each of your services, though not all together. There is a fairly prominent navigation panel on the top left of your screen which allows you to decide which feeds you want to see.

Having configured your feeds you can post status updates, tweet, blog and respond to other peoples posts on each of these services. The interface is nice and clean, and we liked the design and display of the feeds. Individual posts are quite prominent, it all looks very pretty, and it is extremely easy to respond and interact. And really what more do you want?

The Doddlr logo

Fair point of warning however, is the fact that the service can be quite buggy -Four of us tried it out, and the feeds only displayed for two of us!  Also in a few instances, status updates we posted did not go through immediately.

One other roadblock could be the fact that the site is just limited to four services, and does not include Google Plus or Instagram. Given that the latest data put Google Plus ahead of both Twitter and Tumblr, was leaving it out unwise? Jack Halstead, one of the creators, does not think so.
“We believe our 4 services we currently support was a nice foundation level to enter the market with, other services like Google Plus are definitely in the pipeline”.
We still don’t buy the rationale.
What’s different?
We already have services like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Seesmic, which allow users to easily manage multiple social media accounts, so how will the entrance of Doddlr make a difference?
Halstead says that the difference is in the focus.

“Doddlr is focused on an individual experience. It is not packed with analytics and will not allow users to generate data about their social media presence. We are designed for use by the individual. Our user interface is refined and less clunky, providing the user access to the content they want to see. Doddlr focuses on the individual, keeping them up to date and current”.

“Doddlr is a convenient way to keep up-to-date with major social media, without having to browse multiple tabs. Doddlr focuses on current information, therefore there are no timelines/histories which allows the user to be who they want to be each day. With more services like Google Plus and Instagram in the pipeline, Doddlr will become increasingly useful and practical to our users”, he said.

What about privacy?
It would be understandable that many users would be nervous about giving over their email and social networking passwords over to Doddlr so that they can be connected to the dashboard. But Doddlr assures us that there is nothing to worry about.
“Doddlr never holds any user passwords for other services, during the connection process user’s tell Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr to grant us access to some of their data, ie tweets, but we never hold any sensitive information such as their password”, said Halstead.

The final word
We like the idea of Doddlr, though the user experience and tech fixes need work. There is still ample room for a new player in the social media dashboard space, as more people spread themselves across even more social networks. Especially one that is focused on the individual.

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