Miio – A Social Messaging Platform for Sharing and Meeting New People

Miio is a new microblogging platform that allows you to meet new people, engage in conversations, create and participate in groups and much more. The sites makes use of Twitter OAuth for login, though you can create a regular account if you prefer. At first glance, the site may seem as if there’s not much to it but, as you dig deeper you will discover an impressive amount of features. The main purpose of Miio is to meet and chat with people who share the same interests as you.

That dashboard is where you will find your timeline. Here you can update your status (on Miio), and share content. When you click in the status update box you will notice that some new options will appear below it. You’ll then be able to share text, reviews, questions, links, photos, videos and locations. For each type of content that you share, there are specific options that you can add to go with it. All of them allow you to add metadata — keywords, location, address, country, state, city. All of them also let you choose the distribution type — public to everyone, public to specific users, private to friends only, private to specific users or to a specific group.

On the left hand menu you’ll be able to see whenever you have new messages and replies. You’ll also be able to see whenever threads that you’re in have been updated as well as other notifications (such as you followers).

Miio lets you send and read messages on your mobile phone but in order to do this, you’ll need to confirm your phone on the site. As far as general notifications, you can receive things like new follow requests and group invitations on the site dashboard only or via email and/or SMS (your choice); message settings work the same way. Miio can also automatically refresh on its own or you can set it to manually refresh. If you choose auto refresh, you’ll be able to set how often (in seconds or minutes) that it refreshes.

One thing that I like about Miio is how easy it is to send messages to your friends. You simply go to their profile page and type your message in the status box at the top. You can choose right there to have your message public or private. You also have the ability to mute specific friends (without having to unfollow them). Each friend can have its own specific options besides being on mute; you can also choose to receive updates (that you pick and choose) about a certain friend on your dashboard, via SMS and/or via email. So, there are a lot of customization options that let you tailor the site to meet your needs.

Groups is another big thing on Miio. You can join groups created by other users or create your own. Groups can also be put on mute and you can also pick and choose which content you receive notifications for on the dashboard, via SMS and/or by email.

The public timeline has lots of filtering options. For instance, you can choose to view only status updates, RSS feeds (which Miio lets users import), groups only, links only, etc. You can also filter by a specific user by typing their name into a text box. So, Miio makes it really easy to read what’s important to you and filter out the rest.

For items that you see on the timeline you can share it on your own timeline (and on Twitter if you have connected your account), reply or delete it from the timeline as well as view the metadata or view more info about the user that posted it.

My only complaint here is that clicking on an option will take you away from the timeline and to a new page, which causes you to lose your place on the timeline. Items are not marked as read, so one you return to the timeline you’ll have to find find the spot where you left off. So, if you were 3 pages down, you’ll have to navigate back to that 3rd page. In my opinion, this is a bit of a nuisance.

I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of Miio’s features so, if you want to know more be sure to stop by and sign up. I have found the community there pretty active, welcoming and friendly. If you do sign up, be sure to share your thoughts and feedback in the comments.

Written by Charnita Fance from mrsfance
Posted on July 24th, 2010 and filed under Reviews, Social Media
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