• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 24, 2009

From Facebook to Flickr, Twitter to YouTube, consumers and professionals alike are experiencing an explosion in online community activity. In an effort to streamline the flow of information, Minneapolis-based ad agency Fallon on Tuesday released Skimmer -- a desktop widget that helps users track activity across their various social networks.

The product launch is a way for Fallon to endear itself with digitally connected early-adopters, while demonstrating its unique design skills.

"Designing experiences is one of our strengths at Fallon," said Chris Wiggins, creative director at Fallon. "If you're going to look at something and use it all day, it should be delightful."

Skimmer is an ad-free Adobe AIR-based desktop application that consolidates a user's many social media feeds into a single stream of real-time content.

As a part of its debut, Skimmer will also play a prominent role in Fallon's new corporate Web site. All employees' social media activity and updates will be published via Skimmer on a special section of Fallon.com.

"For others, Skimmer is a lifestream ... For Fallon, it is a brandstream." said Rob Buchner, chief marketing officer at Fallon. "This allows us to live and communicate our brand as authentically as possible in connection with the world at large."

Fallon is not the only agency to experiment in the field of social media tools and applications.

Brooklyn digital shop Big Spaceship recently launched its Qapture service, which aggregates links shared over Twitter by top users in the fields of marketing, advertising, design, and strategy. Wenham, Mass.-based Mullen, meanwhile, has tested several tools to gather Twitter chatter that is related specifically to the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards.