A Closer Look At Microsoft Spindex, An Experimental Social Aggregator

Earlier this week during a keynote presentation at Web 2.0, Lili Cheng, head of Microsoft's Future Social Experiences Labs (FUSE) group, unveiled their latest research project: Spindex , a 'social personal index' for your web content. The site is in a private beta, but some beta invites were handed out at the conference, and I've just *cough* taken it for a spin. My initial impressions are below. When you first fire up Spindex, the site asks you to link your Twitter, Facebook, and Evernote accounts, as well as any RSS feeds you follow. After you do that you're kicked into the main site, which is broken into three sections: a left sidebar for navigation, and two columns with content. In the navigation sidebar you select which source you want to browse through (based on the accounts you linked earlier), and there's an option to see a combined stream of the data inputs called 'All'. At the very top of the page is a search box that lets you search all of your friends' recent updates (it's like Twitter search, but restricted to just your friends).