Desktop apps that draw together all the social media streams that people follow are becoming extremely common, and the alpha release or this app adds Sobees to that list.
This is an Beta release, so we can maybe expect more services to be added later in Sobees's development. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace is a pretty small selection, and it feels like RSS feed support is missing.
The Sobees interface is attractive and functional. There are a number of layout settings, meaning you can pretty much show multiple services in any way you like. You can also manage multiple accounts of all services, which is great for "professional" twitterers! Each account has a sidebar of options, like 'view only links', a great way of filtering down just the information you want.
Sobees also features a real-time search, which is actually a Twitter search. It's a nice addition, as following trends and breaking news on Twitter is an increasingly important part of the service.
Overall, Sobees is a well put together application. However, it could do with some more services available, and it's occasionally slow and unresponsive. With any luck, future releases will be quicker. It's difficult to say this is better than any similar apps, but if you like the design it's a stable and functional manager for your social media.
Sobees is an interesting social media desktop app that's worth keeping an eye on as it develops.
