Two years ago, in february 2016, I have started to code an application called Socializer. Its goal is to be a full featured windows client to use all features present in VK, the largest russian social network and one of the places I enjoy to visit dayly. If you have used TWBlue, socializer was designed to do the same as TWBlue, but for a more featured social network full of rich content and with real time chat, among other interesting things.

However, with the time being, I had to stop working in socializer due to, mainly, lack of time to dedicate to open source projects, rapid changes over the VK API and the disruption of one of the most important features for me, the audio services at VK, for third party developers. As a third party developer, I was strongly limited to work with everything except any kind of audio or video content (support for videos was less limited, but still there were a couple of things you could not do from any API authorised application).

Today i wanted to make this short (Initially it was planned to be a short) post for announcing the new life this project has gotten. Since november 2018, I have started to look into this source code as a way of getting inspiration to other projects. Normally when I want to give a new technology a try, I look for one of the small projects I own, implement such technology there and, depending in the results, will decide if I will integrate it in other projects or not worth the effort. I have used Socializer to test a few successful experiments, but the main reason why I have started to code it back it’s because I wanted to have a full featured client for VK. Its website is very accessible, and I know there are people working on it, but for me, there is nothing better than using the social network from a client instead having to keep a browser open forever.

Today i would like to announce the latest Socializer Build, ready to be tested by everyone having a profile at VK.com. If you are interested in the source code, i have to say that I have switched from Github to GitLab, which gives me more flexibility and better control of the source code, a better organised release process and a good continuous integration system built in. The github repository is still getting updates, but more frequent code changes are being pushed to Gitlab, and the full CI environment is also only in GitLab. I plan to use github for issues and pull requests, mainly.

Bear in mind that the application is still in an alpha stage. It is very likely you will find strange bugs or errors that noone has reported before, and that’s why I have decided to post this entry: if you are interested in testing the application, give me your feedback and report the bug you are having, it would be really good to have your help. The current released version of Socializer is the 0.16 version, I am already working in 0.17, but any bug report in comments of this entry or to my Vk Account will be very welcome.

So, what are you waiting for? Visit the project’s homepage and download the latest version