There’s quite a lot of talk lately about lifestreaming and how it is apparently the next big thing in social media. So much so, a number of seminars have cropped up dedicated to discussing what lifestreaming means in a wider context and how brands can utilise it for business benefits.
For those that don’t know, a lifestream is basically a central hub which aggregates all your daily online activities from different social media channels. The most well known lifestreaming application is probably FriendFeed.
The idea behind it is fairly basic. You sign up to Friendfeed, give it the usernames (sometimes a password is requred) or RSS feeds of your social media profiles and it will begin to pull in your content as you create it around the web. Meaning that on one day you could add an image to Flickr, save an interesting article to Delicious, make a tweet on Twitter or upload a video to YouTube and each will appear on your Friendfeed page.
Here’s one I created earlier.
“Great”, you might say. And if you’re of the geek persuasion you would probably say “cool!”. Other than that, though, I don’t see any benefits from a business and communications point of view. Sure, it’s great if you’re using it personally and you enjoy (to steal YouTube’s mantra) ‘broadcasting yourself’ but one wonders why it’s garnered so much attention from people in corporate roles.
To me it’s the same as lifecasting. Yeah the idea is good but it will have very little, if any, relevance in a business context. Or am I missing something?
Stephen is a communications consultant based out of the UK. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen
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Alison Avigayil Ramer
Even though I don’t work in the corporate world, many of my clients also request that I post the same information to their twitter and facebook account, or find ways to aggregate their many social networks. However, as you expounded in a previous article in March, facebook is a different environment from Twitter. Your followers in FB have a expectation of what content they will be exposed to from your personal profile. Twitter on the other hand, is a more professional and more geeky–posting “I can’t wait to see Jessica! It’s been too long” on your twitter is out of place–but on your facebook…well it’s standard.
Ed
I tried out FF and found is really useful/interesting. Then i discovered Twitter a few days later and found that even better (although for different – as well as similar reasons).
Few points from my perspective.
I want others to pull information together and offer me their insights based on this. In other words I don´t want to look at people´s aggregated sources for content (on FF for example). I want them to give me some interesting and useful insights based on whatever ways they have aggregated the sources for their content (i.e. on FF). Although it is sometimes interesting looking at other people´s aggregated FF entries, I just don´t have the time to do it. I only have the time to read what people have carefully thought about and placed on their blogs.
And because I only have time really to do Twitter (really focus on that) so I just don´t have time to gather my own stuff on FF (but i think i would have more time to do this than look at other people´s FF entries).
FF is really good. But i just find there isn´t enough time in the day to use it.
david brain
Yes I’m with you Stephen on this one I don’t fully get it yet. Mind you, I say that regularly – - here’s what I said about Twitter in April 2007 http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=162 . So I am willing to experiment and wait and see. But for now Facebook kind of does my life streaming as I never really made the Twitter = work, FB = personal split.
Stephen
Ha! I said pretty much the same about Twitter early on too – http://www.prblogger.com/2007/03/twitter-i-dont-get-it/ – and should have referenced that here.
I’m trying to stay openminded about it and I’m sure it will be beneficial for *some* but in the grand scheme of things it’s irrelevant.
That said, my words are here so when the lifestreaming revolution does come I’m ready to be chastised.
david brain
bloody internet……can’t hide our ignorance any more mate
Maria Stefanova
The only business benefit that I can think of is for monitoring purposes – e.g. if you’d like to give your client a snapshot of the online activity you or your team have done for them over a certain period of time…can’t really think of anything else.
Orla
I think lifecasting is very relevant to events and training. It could enable staff to watch seminars live in other locations. This could be especially important if there is excess demand for an event or if staff work remotely. I wrote a post on making events pay a little while ago. http://orlakennedy.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/roi-making-events-pay-using-social-media-technologies/
Stephen
Hi Orla,
I can understand the concept of streaming a live video feed so those that cannot attend for perhaps geographical reasons, but why take the ‘lifecasting’ approach (I.e. effectively strapping a camera to someone’s head) as opposed to setting up a professional video camera and using webinar software?
Lifecasting basically means having a video camera strapped to your head 24 hours a day which submits a live feed to the internet.
As I said in the post, cool idea but I’m not buying it as a business tool. It has very limited use.
Dan
Good to see you back on the frontline of PR blogging Ste!
I’ve not really bought into the lifestreaming thing yet, maybe because I don’t want people to see some of the horrible crap I publish and read on the Internet (with the exception of PR Blogger, naturally…)
On face value, it’s a bit self-indulgent and narcissistic. But on the flipside, it looks brilliant for organising your footprints on the web, and making your content accessible. Like you said, it’s just a way of aggregating existing content from X-number of platforms, and packaging it in a digestible format for your audience – prosumer, customer or whatever.
I’d have thought it would be useful for business communications in the same way an optimised filing system is for accounts?