Conduits allow you to share your Snikkr status and location with other services, so that people outside your Snikkr network can see them. Currently, you can only create and manager your conduits from the My Snikkr web page. (Eventually you may be able to manage them from your mobile device as well.) However, once a conduit is active, your status and location will be shared whether you update them from the web, or from your mobile device.

To set up a condiut, you click on the conduit's Share button. This will bring up a dialog that tells you what is about to happen, and, depending on the conduit, may ask you to select some options. Most conduits will then take you to the partner's web site, where you can authorize Snikkr to access or update your data. After you agree, your browser will be redirected back to Snikkr.

The Twitter conduit will share any of your status updates with your Twitter account. This only applies to your own status updates, and not any comments you make in Snikkr about other users or favorites.

The FireEagle conduit works in two different ways. It can be configured either to share (forward) your Snikkr location to the FireEagle service, or to get your location from FireEagle.

Users who can download Snikkr Mobile to their handheld will usually choose the first option (to forward their Snikkr location to FireEagle). This will allow their friends who use other FireEagle-savvy services (like Friends on Fire) to track their location.

Users who cannot run Snikkr Mobile to track their location, but are instead using some other service that publishes their location to FireEagle, would use the second option (to get their location from FireEagle). This would allow someone using different software to track their location (like Brightkite or Dopplr) to share that location with their friends using Snikkr.

Example: Sam uses Snikkr Mobile to track his location, and get great social productivity services. But his friend Irene has an iPhone, so can't use Snikkr yet to track her location.

Sam uses the My Snikkr web interface to set up the conduit to share his location with FireEagle. This requires him to login to Yahoo FireEagle when the conduit is set up, and tell FireEagle it is ok for Snikkr to update his location.

Irene registers with Snikkr, and sets up her FireEagle conduit to get her location every 5 minutes from FireEagle. Then, Irene downloads an iPhone app like Voilà, which will allow her to publish her location to FireEagle every time she starts the app. She then follows the instructions in Voilà to authorize the application with FireEagle.

Irene then uses the Add Friend feature in Snikkr to add Sam as a friend. Once he accepts, Sam and Irene can share their location with each other whenever they want. They can both use the My Snikkr web interface to see where the other one is. Sam can also use Snikkr Mobile to see where Irene is. Since Irene can't run Snikkr Mobile, she can't see Sam's location on her phone.