Mild (Free version) is a social networking tool that will take your Facebook or Twitter account and publish it into a blog format, with it’s own publicly accessible URL. You can then share the resulting blog as you choose, by publicizing the URL or sending the link to friends, etc.
If you’re one of the millions of dedicated bloggers around the world, you may be among those who wish for a way to deal with Twitter and Facebook as a blog instead of having all three separate.
That’s where Mild can help you out. The free version allows you to take either your Facebook or Twitter account, attach it to the “Dashboard” in Mild, and get a blog containing the same data as those social accounts.
While they do offer upgraded versions that give you complete control over the look and feel as well as some technical options for a price, the free version is complete and gives you a finished product without those options. I would say it works best for those that want a quick and easy way to connect both their Twitter and Facebook accounts in one spot. If nothing else, that sure would make it easier for friends and relations to keep up on everything you post.
The process of signing up and using Mild Free is pretty darn quick and easy. You’ll need to provide an email address and password to begin with. Once those are set, you’ll be able to log in immediately and attach your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is done for each one simply by clicking the link on the Mild Dashboard and then authorizing the application to modify and work with your account. Note here that if you’re not comfortable having another program manage posts or mess with your Facebook or Twitter data, this is where you’d have a problem. Mild does require access to posts and other high levels of edit permissions on both the accounts but then again, so do most of the applications out there that interact with them so it’s pretty standard stuff. You do get some settings to fiddle with, mostly font work and such, but most of it is done for you.
Once you’ve connected either or both of your accounts, you will be given a link to the resulting blog. Mild automatically takes in the data on your Facebook or Twitter site and converts it to a pretty standard looking blog page. While there aren’t really any customization options for the end result, it does look clean and professional without a lot of junk or trash images every three pixels. Having this link is another, simple way for people to access and find out what is going on in your world. I found it particularly useful for certain people who have a hard time with all the bombardment of information on the social sites, as the blog lays it out in a slightly more traditional way. People who miss newspapers will enjoy the results, particularly. After you have made the connections, you may need to wait a few minutes for the results to be posted, so if you get a ‘cannot find’ error at first, don’t panic. The process just takes a few minutes to complete. The resulting blog will be updated live, every time your Facebook or Twitter account is updated.
The verdict: with all the different social options out there now, things like Mild are becoming more and more popular as people demand and use new ways to interact with their own social accounts as well as other people. Mild Free is still in beta, however and can be improved greatly. Here’s a little wish list:
- The ability to customize the look and feel and theme of the site, significantly more that the handful of tweaks that are currently on offer.
- The ability to hide certain posts/status updates and NOT make them public, and the option to treat all status updates as private until the user manually ‘publishes’ them.
- The option to combine Twitter and Facebook blogs, rather than have one URL for each.
- The option to add multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts
- Bugfixes: republished videos, for example, tend to show up twice on the Mild blog.
In summary, Mild Free is limited but it does work and the results are more or less as promised. That’s a heck of a lot more than can be said for many other products and services out there, especially those in the social realm, so head over to their site and give it a try. Until next time, my friends.
Check out Mild Free here.
