A few minutes ago Seesmic rolled out the latest version of their desktop application which now includes Facebook comments, spell check, and Twitter spam reporting. I’ve downloaded it and tested it out and while it’s a bit more useful, it is definitely not perfect. In order to comment on stories you need to click on an arrow icon and view a status update in another tab, at which point you can follow the thread of comments.

Then again viewing 151 comments, as Maria Sharapova has on her latest status update to her public profile, from directly in your feed wouldn’t make much sense either. You can also view likes directly from within the Seesmic application. It’s pretty useful. I can now view my Twitter feed and Facebook feed in one compact space. The only problem? I have about 10,000 messages to filter through.

None of the desktop applications released so far really do anything to provide what the true value is: filtering the feed. One desktop application after the other keeps popping up but I’m not sure what these applications are really aiming to accomplish if they don’t plan on producing more effective filters. Yes, I know that Tweetdeck provides some filtering options but honestly I can’t really figure out how to get it done quickly and it doesn’t really create an accurate filter.

For example if I filter by the word “Facebook”, I could be reading people that have just updated their Facebook status update but are not commenting on something actually related to Facebook. So how do you differentiate between those two stories? I’ll tell you: by developing actual technology that filters through feed stories. This requires significant investment but it will provide lasting value.

Right now desktop applications for Twitter and Facebook feed stories are as novel as Facebook applications were when the platform first launched. While most active users have already come to terms with feed overload, not every user has realized the problem yet but they quickly will. I dove head first into the content stream and the stream rapidly manifested itself into white water rapids.

Now I’m standing on a rock waiting for someone with a raft to come by but so far there’s nobody in sight. I appreciate Seesmic providing me some goggles to see down the river but seriously, someone needs to throw out a life line at the least. Have you found anything that helps you effectively filter your feed without a substantial time investment?

I could probably figure it out but at this point I have content overload and don’t have much of a desire to see my streams anymore.