Aggregation is not lifestreaming
<rant>
Here is something that has been bothering me for a while – the word ‘lifestreaming’ – especially in relation to services like FriendFeed, Socialthing and others aggregators.
Everybody seems to be hellbend on calling every new social media aggregator a “lifestreaming service”. But have you looked at the ‘everyone’ feed on FriendFeed? Nothing on there comes very close to ‘lifestreaming.’
Pretty much everything I do online goes into my FriendFeed, but that is not my life – it’s part of my life – but it’s not enough to call it ‘lifestreaming.’ I hope most of us lead lives that go at least a little bit beyond the stuff we do on the net.
Now those kids with the cameras on their hats 24/7 – those are lifestreamers – and God knows how boring watching those people is unless they are about to get laid, get in a fight, or do an interview with somebody a lot more interesting than they are.
While our personalities surely show through when we write online, post Flickr photos, twitter etc. – for 99% of people, this is just a minor part of their life. I know blogging is supposed to be raw, direct and personal, but that doesn’t mean that most people online do not put on at least some kind of a public persona. And let’s face it – most of us don’t care to read about the minutia of most people’s lives.
Anyway – just had to get that out of my system.
</rant>