Radio3 is a web application that provides the ability to publish content to Twitter, Facebook, and Wordpress, in addition to creating an RSS feed. In concept it is a wonderful idea but I find that in practice it requires remembering the unique requirements of the different social networks.

The best way to use Radio3 is to use a bookmarklet on your brower's toolbar so that if you want to share a web page all you need to do is click a button, do a little bit of editing, and click Submit to share that page on Twitter, Facebook, and Wordpress. By default, Radio3 is best used to share links to web pages without you adding additional content. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• When you click the Radio3 bookmarklet, a new tab opens in your browser to display the Radio3 editor. The title of the web page that you are sharing is populated in the main input box on the page, which is the box immediately below the head "Shut up and eat your vegetables". Below that input box is a line titled "Title, Link & Enclosure" and if you click that line three fields expand and the Link field will be populated. When you click Submit the following happens:

  • The content of the main input box and the link to the page are posted on Twitter, provided it is 140 characters or less.

  • The content of the main input box and the link to the page are posted on Facebook.

  • The content of the main input box is used as the title for a Wordpress post, and the link that you shared is posted in the body of the Wordpress post.

  • An item is added to your linkblog RSS feed.

  • An item is added to your linkblog home page.

• If the content that you put in the main input box exceeds 140 characters, and you have Radio3 configure to post to Twitter, Facebook, and Wordpress the following happens:

  • The content and the link are not posted on Twitter

  • The content and the link are posted to Facebook

  • The content is posted to the title for a Wordpress post, and and the link that you shared is posted in the body of the Wordpress post.

In my opinion, Wordpress is not well suited for the linkblogging because it requires titles. Pushing the content of an item into a Wordpress title ends up with really long titles and no real content, so I go into Settings and clear the Post links to Wordpress option. The latest version of Radio3 adds the ability to write blog posts, properly formatted for Wordpress, but in order to post to Wordpress Radio3 must be configured to post links to Wordpress.

The Title field in Radio3 is ignored unless you explicitly select creating a blog post. To use Wordpress with Radio3 in the manner that I want to use it, I have to explicitly disable sending links to Wordpress until I want to create a Wordpress blog post, for which I then have to turn on sending links to Wordpress before submitting the post.

I think Radio3 could be made easier to use with Wordpress in the following way:

• If the user does not enable posting links to Wordpress, then do not post links to Wordpress.

• If the user populates the fields in the Wordpress tab in the Radio3 settings, and if the user selects to create a blog post in Radio3 AND the title field is populated, then post the item to Wordpress, Twitter, Facebook, and the Radio3 linkblog and feed. As a user I am explicitly indicating that I want to post to Wordpress by providing the link to the blog and my credentials and selecting blog post. Requiring the Title field be populated insures that the post is created in the format that Wordpress expects, which requires a title. The process of writing a blog post is simplified because the user doesn't have to change the settings every time he wants to post an item on Wordpress.