By Steve Safran, Sr. Vice President, Media 2.0 at AR&D

One of the great things about open networks is that they allow - heck, encourage - others to develop software that powers them. Facebook and Twitter are two primary platforms that take advantage of this phenomenon. There are tools that you can use that make Facebook and Twitter updating simple, even from your mobile phone. Why is this important for news? The more ways we have of updating social media, the more likely we are to use social media. And that's nothing but a plus for connecting with our audience.

In honor of the fourth Thursday of November, here are four tools you can use right now.

1. TWEETDECK: One of the early criticisms of Twitter was that it was hard to follow all the updates. Indeed, if you have a feed going of several hundred friends, it can be a little hard to keep up. Enter Tweetdeck, which organizes your Twitter and Facebook feeds however you see fit. You can choose search terms to break out, so that you have a column of updates that mention, say, your newscast. This is a great way to follow what the community is saying about you and your work. TweetDeck is available for your computer and mobile devices.

2. FRIENDFEED: It's a little overwhelming to think of all the social networks you need to follow these days. If you participate in several (and you should) you're going to be bouncing around a lot of pages. That is, unless you use FriendFeed. This social network aggregator pulls from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Delicious, YouTube, Google… the list goes on. You can see all the updates in a single place. Bonus points: Your FriendFeed will have an RSS feed you can put directly in your RSS reader. One-stop shopping.

3. TWITTERBERRY: The iPhone doesn't get to have all the fun. If you're using a Blackberry, Twitterberry is the app for you. You can update your Twitter feed from your Blackberry, allowing your reporters to give breaking news updates from wherever they are.

4. DIGG TOOLBAR: You're probably familiar by now with digg; it's the site where people recommend stories to each other, and rank those stories based upon their popularity. Submitting a story to digg can result in a big up-tick in your visits. (Be careful only to submit those stories that have a good shot at being viral.) Digg Toolbar makes it simple to submit stories to digg. It also shows you its hand-picked links and has an RSS Reader and Podcast player built in. All of this come in a handy plug-in that installs into your browser. (Safari, Firefox and IE-compatible.)

Have a great Thanksgiving, and remember: the goal of being social is to be social.