Ever since I took the plunge, I’m been trying to make sense of all the information that is pouring into my various online media channels.  I’m not using the word ‘social’ here, as I’m also including the ‘old’ new media like RSS blog feeds; however, it’s true that the social media platforms dominate my channels.  Here are some tools that I’ve found useful, in no particular order

1. Bottlenose

Bottlenose pulls in all the links from accounts (currently LinkedIn, Google Reader, Facebook and Twitter), and syndicates it for me in three different ways, all which are useful.  The Sonar view is great for seeing which topic is trending, while the Newspaper view lets Bottlenose pick which are the articles of note that I should be paying attention to.  Besides that, the content filters help segment the articles into different categories. Overall, great when I simply do not have time to pour through all those links.

2. Feedly

Feedly focuses on RSS feeds and presents the contents in a highly readable format, making plowing through them a breeze.  I subscribe to feeds for a reason, and Feedly is where I go when I don’t want to lose notable posts in the social media noise.

3. Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is my default Twitter/Facebook client, for good reason: it makes tracking hashtags, and thus tweetchats a breeze, and the Andriod app highlights all the tweets/updates that I’ve missed out in the channels that I’ve included.  Great for when I have the time to scroll through the messages for the day, and if I’m skimming, I can choose to rapid scroll upwards by tapping the top bar, before tapping on the main screen to stop the scrolling.

4. HootSuite

HootSuite is similar to Tweetdeck in many ways.  What I like about it is the flexibility it gives me in putting different custom streams in different tabs, so that I can choose which view I want at any one time. (I’m the type who loves to keep a gazillion tabs open at any one time.)

5. Instapaper 

While I haven’t figured out the best way to use this, thus far it’s made saving websites and online articles for later reading a breeze.  Doesn’t work as well with video-heavy posts.

Honourable Mentions: Evernote, ifttt, Readability

What are your choices?  Please comment below!