Streamified Blog

SGPlus => Streamified

You may already know, especially if you’ve been reading our blog, that what started as a product called “Start Google Plus” is now evolving into something new. What was originally a simple browser extension to transfer photos from Facebook to Google+ quickly grew to a full-fledged service that combined multiple social networks into one simplified stream. This service ultimately became the intellectual predecessor of Streamified, the mobile application that allows you to pull from an expansive and ever-growing list of social networks, news sites, web comics, RSS feeds and many more.

During development of the iOS app, the existing SGPlus browser extension had to take a back seat, and was, unfortunately, neglected. But now that the iOS mobile app has been released, we are doubling our efforts to provide a complete solution for managing all of your social networks.

In order to bring the quality of the SGPlus browser extension up to par with the iOS mobile app, we’ve been hard at work to create a complete reworking of the SGPlus browser extension. This update will also come with a name change, and upon its release you will notice that we are rechristening the extension Streamified, just like its iOS cousin. The browser extension and the mobile application were created with the same intent and goal: to create a seamless social experience that combines all of your streams and postings into a single location. It is our hope that aligning the two products in this way will make that clear.

Of course, there will be a few differences. Mobile applications and web browsers are two separate beasts, and we’re doing our best to design a Streamified experience that suits their strengths. On the mobile platform, of course, this meant creating an entirely new app that shows a collection of “streams” and has buttons to compose, share a link, save a website to read later, etc.

In the browser extension, as before, you’ll still see your other social network streams inserted into your Google+ streams, and you’ll still be able to cross-post from Google+ to other networks. What’s new is that in addition to the networks that SGPlus currently supports (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter), you’ll have access to all the Streamified networks, such as Google Reader, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit and many, many more.

Over time, we plan to improve the ways in which this new Start Google Plus Streamified browser extension update integrates with your browser. What if, for example, you could see your other network streams (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) from within your Facebook feed, as well? What if sharing any page that you are on were as simple as pressing a button and selecting the networks?

The possibilities are endless, and we’re really excited to see what the future holds for Streamified on the browser! If you have any questions, suggestions, complaints or praises, please let us know on our support page.

This post was co-written by Zane Claes, founder and programmer, and Jon Hughes, senior front-end web developer, from Streamified. They can be reached at Zane@streamified.com and Jon@streamified.com, respectively.