When we want more and more information, the focus often shifts to how we’re consuming that content. There are many sites on the market that aim to organise and streamline the content, while providing original ways in which that content is viewed. Here I’ve outlined some of the sites that offer a different way to view content, they’re not all new but some of the oldies are too good to miss out!

Flickr Color Selectr

This is by no means a new site but it’s actually a great way to view pictures on Flickr, particularly for designers. Just select your colour or type in the code and it pulls in photos from Flickr that match. It’s an oldie but a goodie.

Digg Labs

Digg have come up with some really interesting ways to view the latest stories submitted, including pictures, stacks, or my personal favourite – Swarm.

Seesmic Look

Seesmic Look is a new product to the market that provides a new way to view the real-time web. No additional log-in required, just enter your Twitter details and you can start to view your real-time updates in a completely different way. The interface itself is something different, but Seesmic Look is also changing the way you can discover new content. By organising Twitter users into categories, you can find new accounts to follow based on interest. Seesmic Look has also introduced the concept of featured channels which are sponsored by brands. The fact that this provides a different option for businesses hoping to utilise the microblogging channel.

TopicFire

When it comes to viewing content online, sometimes simplicity is the key and that’s something I think TopicFire have achieved perfectly, while still providing a useful and relevant service. TopicFire works by ranking posts according to their comment level, rather than diggs, tweets etc… which is an interesting metric to measure by. They’ve also integrated the site with Twitter, whereby they’re creating different Twitter feeds with topic. A story with a ‘heat rank’ of 10 gets pushed out to the Twitter account, so you know you’re seeing the hottest content right now.

Streamy

Streamy Welcome from Streamy on Vimeo.

Streamy is an incredibly social RSS Feed aggregator, that connects with your Facebook/Friendfeed accounts and offers functionality such as chat and the ability to suggest stories to friends. You can also join groups and view the latest activity of your friends on there. The sharing option is particularly neat and is a great tool. My only criticism is that it’s a little too busy, but if you invest the time in it that’s needed, it can become a great way to not only organise your content, but find new sites and groups that are of interest to you.

Pearltrees

Pearltrees is a site for the more social media literate among you – I can’t promise that it’s easy. Pearltrees is a new site that works by organising the content you discover and add online. It works by creating a pearltree around a particular topic then adding individual pearls ( a website would be a pearl for example). You can leave comments on other people’s pearls and add to you yours as you visit different websites, by installing the pearltrees toolbar. The beauty of this is in the visualisiation of content, rather than the ease of use.

Sobees

If you ever wanted a super simple real-time search client that categorises on media type, then Sobees may well be the one for you. Simply enter a search term and sobees will split down content according to pictures, film, real-time (Twitter, One Riot) etc.. The site clearly follows the familiar column layout of Tweetdeck and is a good way to see a snapshot of what’s hot right now. (Requires silverlight to run on Macs).

Rippol

Rippol is a video search engine with a heavy slant to the social aspect. You can discover videos in the usual way and also login through Twitter or Facebook to see what your friends are watching or connect via Facebook chat. The benefits of Rippol are clear, pulling in content from other video sharing sites, but whether we’re ready for anything other than the simplicity of youtube remains to be seen.