Content Sync Done Right; Soocial

Many of us struggle with the synchronization of our contact lists; we all use Facebook, we all use email, we all have phones, but what we never seem to get “right” is one common contact list. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed to send an email from my phone and not had the email address stored there. Sure a single Exchange or LDAP server solves the issue, but how many of us want to have to maintain Exchange, let alone run one at home. Enter, Soocial. Yes, there’s two o’s… probably because it’s twice as magical as you’d think, or maybe it’s because the two o’s look a bit like an infinity symbol… who knows.

Simply put, Soocial is a cross-platform contact synchronization service. And when I say cross-platform, I don’t just mean Windows vs. Mac; according to their website, Soocial supports over 500 devices and services, ranging from phones (Symbian, Android, iOS, etc.) to applications (Outlook), and services (Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo!, etc.). Once you signup and configure each device you want included in the sync, Soocial goes to work making sure that all of the contacts match on each device. Cue the cheesy “but wait, there’s more” music… Sure Soocial syncs your contacts (that’s what it “sells” itself as doing), but it also lets you download and store full backups of your contacts, import/export contacts, automatically remove duplicates, edit contacts (including photos) within the browser, and even manage and view versions of each contact (yes, it stores an incremental version each time a contact is edited).

Here’s another intriguing thought too; with Facebook becoming the “record of authority” for everything we do, now you can sync your Facebook contacts to Outlook and other devices. Soocial doesn’t have a Facebook connector, but if you’ve got an Android phone that’s mapped to Facebook, Soocial will let you select the Facebook contacts for synchronization. This means if you’re like me, and don’t really like sending “email” back and forth as Facebook messages, you can now easily load and maintain a list of all of your Facebook friend’s email addresses in your preferred email client; that’s kind of slick (I think).

Admittedly, I had some issues with the Outlook connector not working right the first time, but a reinstall solved that and all seems to be well. There is a free version, but realistically anyone reading my blog is going to quickly outgrow the free offering (which limits you to 250 contacts and 3 connections). That said, the upgraded (read, “paid”) version eliminates those limits, and lets you do some advanced filtering to push specific contacts to specific devices, and it’s not that expensive: $3.99/month, or $39/year. I’d never suggest you buy the paid version solely on my blog post though, try the free version and see how it works for you first.