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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Will businesses adopt lifestreams?

imageI maintain a couple of lifestreams, one at Tumblr and one at Jaiku. The Tumblr lifestream frustrates the hell out of me. I enter the URL of a perfectly valid feed, then check back to find a big red X and a note informing me that the feed could be found. Jaiku finds all the feeds without any trouble.

In case you haven’t heard of a lifestream or aren’t sure what they are, the concept is simple. The various places you maintain a social media footprint by and large all have RSS feeds associated with them. In a lifestream, you aggregate those feeds. People visiting the lifestream can see everything you have done on any of these properties—new blog posts, del.icio.us bookmarks, photos uploaded to Flickr, videos to YouTube, Twitter tweets, the list goes on.

It’s mildly surprising to me that businesses have not considered the equivalent of a lifestream. Company RSS feeds cover press releases and other news. Executives blog. Companies have figured out the value of contributing videos and photos to sharing sites. Some companies are even taking advantage of Twitter. A lifestream would combine every new action on any of these in a single river of company news. Anybody interesting in staying up-to-date on what a company is doing can subscribe to the lifestream feed. It could be a valuable resources to media and the investment community. It seems like a simple enough idea.

I could be wrong, of course; there could be companies already producing lifestreams. If not, though, I wonder which organization will be first.

01/21/08 | 6 Comments | Will businesses adopt lifestreams?

Comments

  • 1.Good post Shel.

    I think that personal and corporate aggregation is going to be a big issue in 2008. The multitude of online presences across social networks, blogs and media sharing sites like those you mentioned in your post is making aggregation a necessity.

    The needs of our audiences or communities are best served by providing a simplified way to access all of our online activity.

    I have a few different lifestream tools that I use. One is Jaiku at http://robsafuto.jaiku.com. I've also created a lifestream feed using Yahoo! Pipes over at http://pipes.yahoo.com/robsafuto/lifestream. Others should feel free to clone my work as the Pipes tool allows for that.

    I'm also using a WordPress plugin called SimplePie (http://www.simplepie.org) to create a lifestream on my tech blog at http://blog.awakenedvoice.com/lifestream. I've seen others using a service called FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/.

    As you can see there is no shortage of tools and techniques to be able to aggregate online activity. For individuals and organizations interested in aggregating the nest step is to explore a little and figure out which tool works best for their personal needs and technical skill level.

    Rob Safuto | January 2008 | Woodstock, NY

  • 2.Great post...I've already devoted a blog post to you this week, so I might wait till next week before writing about it!

    Part of my role is external communication, and I'm addicted to Twitter etc, but hadn't realised how valuable a liftstream could be to people within the company to be able to track everything in one place.

    I remember signing up to Jaiku ages ago, and for some reason, not getting it. I think it was sold to me as a Twitter alternative. But I think it's time to reinvestigate it!

    Badger Gravling | January 2008 | Peterborough, UK

  • 3.liftstream?

    *ahem*

    Lifestream.

    Badger Gravling | January 2008 | Peterborough, UK

  • 4.Maybe businesses have already too many things on their hands that adding a lifestream only makes everything twice as complicated. They might not know that it can incorporate all of their updates in one organized manner. But how many businesses have already set up their own blogs in the first place?

    Jen, writer membershipmillionaire.com | January 2008

  • 5.Shel,

    Thanks for introducing me to these. I do think the name is a bit dramatic...I wonder if there is going to be an eventual rebranding for this communications form...

    J

    Jiyan | January 2008

  • 6.They might not know that it can incorporate all of their updates in one organized manner. But how many businesses have already set up their own blogs in the first place?

    Downtown Toronto Condos | June 2008 | Toronto

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