Windows Phone 8.1 brings a lot in terms of raw functions to end-users, but some things are going missed. For instance, the relevancy of the Me Tile is greatly diminished since notifications were moved to the Notification Center (and the stream was detached).
But perhaps the biggest function that people miss is the ability to cross-post status updates to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. We explained the reasoning behind this in our guide on the new Social Extensibility framework in 8.1, but explanations in and of themselves don’t make people happy. And you’ve said as much.
Luckily, there is one way you can sort of get this feature back, though it’s far from perfect: Path.
Path is a private social network that finally arrived on Windows Phone earlier this year, and like Instagram, it is perpetually in ‘beta’ status. Its last update was in February, which doesn’t make us feel too comfortable, and the app maintains a miserable 2.6 (out of 5) rating on the Store. Yikes.
There is one thing that Path is good for though: mass posting to your social networks. Path lets you cross publish your status to these networks:
- Foursquare
- Tumblr
That’s actually more than what 8.0 did, and it works pretty well. It’s not the fastest method, as you will need to launch the app, hit the ‘+’ button, select the quote icon and then write, making this far from the Me Tile days in 8.0, but we’ll let you decide if it’s useful.
In theory, we suppose a developer could make an app that’s sole function lets you cross-post to various social networks, and then hook that into the Me Tile via that Social Extensibility framework. Check out how Foursquare app 4th & Mayor did this recently. Actually, the developers of Path could do that as well, if they ever decide to optimize for 8.1.
In other words, there’s hope here, folks.
We’ll let you decide if this Path trick is a suitable alternative for now, but our gut tells us that once developers start utilizing the new framework, we should see some interesting creations come to the Store.
Need Path? Grab it here in the Store. It’s free and easy to setup. Let us know if you think this helps or suggest your own solutions below!
Related Reading
- Windows Phone 8.1 Tips, Tricks and How To
Thanks, Benjamin C., for the tip!
