I sat staring down the white screen of WordPress death tonight knowing that I was due a blog post but unable to come up with anything (I’m sure no blogger has EVER had that problem before, EVER).
So, in my writer’s-block-induced haze, I sent out the following tweet:
The lucky winner? Mark Krynsky (@krynsky) responded first:
Crap.
(Although I suppose I should be glad that Arik Hanson didn’t beat him to it, with his “Everything I learned about social media, I learned from Barry Manilow” suggestion.)
Mark was calling on me to refute a post I wrote several weeks ago asking what the big deal was about lifestreaming. That post generated a healthy discussion as readers tried to help me understand what value sites like Tumblr and Posterous added versus a traditional blog and other outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Mark, who authors the LifestreamBlog, left one of many great comments on the post.
I revisited the post and my initial stance. I wrote that original post from the standpoint of genuinely questioning and being curious about the value of lifestreaming, and not necessarily dissing or deriding the practice. A lot of the comments helped clarify my thinking. The most common reason people cited for lifestreaming was that it occupies the space “between Twitter and a blog” and provides an outlet for “off-topic” items that may be out of place on a subject-specific blog. Others use Posterous as a way to clip and save items from the Web, almost like a juiced-up Delicious account.
All are valid reasons, but so far I still haven’t found the time or interest to update (curate?) my own lifestream or really follow anyone else’s.
But, specific to Posterous, which seems to be the most popular lifestreaming tool right now, I will say that I do see the potential from an ease-of-use standpoint. The ability to send in blog posts via e-mail directly to Posterous is very compelling for someone who wants to blog or share information but doesn’t want to deal with a complicated (or even a simple) CMS. And Posterous makes it very easy to record audio clips and send them directly to the site. It’s a way to start creating content with extremely low barriers to entry.
Another interesting “group lifestreaming” experiment took place at Social Media Breakfast Houston. Bryan Person created a Posterous account and had attendees e-mail info and photos. I could see this type of format working for events and conferences as a place to have people collectively contribute content (holy alliteration). The concept is similar to Collecta, a site that pulls in Tweets, photos, and more for specific hashtags.
So, I’m not sure that asking a question can really be “wrong”, but I’ll certainly admit that my eyes have been opened to many more possibilities for lifestreaming. Heck, I may even get around to updating my Posterous account one of these days.
Thanks to Mark and everyone else who participated in my little Twitter/blog/crowdsourcing experiment. For now, writer’s block averted.
Interesting post, Amy. I actually attended a presentation on lifestreaming by Steve Rubel at BlogWorld Expo last week. One of the questioners got at the whole definition of “lifestreaming,” and even Steve admitted it’s very much on flux.
My effort in “group lifestreaming” or “stroystreaming” was actually inspired by Rob Quigley and Daniel Honigman, co-authors of the Old Media, New Tricks blog. Here’s that post: http://www.oldmedianewtricks.com/case-study-on-storystreaming-a-day-in-the-sun/
So, much of this is still to play out. Let’s keep revisiting the topic every couple of months, as new and interesting examples pop up!
Bryan | @BryanPerson
Thanks for the link to Rob and Dan’s post. I’m glad that Mark asked me to revisit the topic as I agree that it’s still changing. While I don’t think that lifestreaming will necessarily replace blogging for everyone the way it did for Steve Rubel, I’m interested to see how it develops and how new examples like your storystreaming concept appear.
Nice post Amy. I’m glad you’ve revisited this topic.
Since you’re last post, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. I don’t agree that life streaming occupies the space between twitter and blogging. I think lifestreaming, particularly something like posterous, provides a more complete picture of a person. If I’m following someone online, l like to get to know them. I like seeing the other side of a person, not just a blog post. I guess it puts things in context for me and exposes their personality.
I’m still giving this a lot of thought but as I started working with posterous, I started to really enjoy using it. The next step is to combine the two, my blog and posterous. It would be really nice if people could subscribe to tags only, for example personal v. professional, because I understand people might not want to see pictures of my dog. And some people might not care about my thoughts on facebook advertising, for example. However, someone like me, might be interested in both.
In any case, I’m glad you revisited the topic. I think it’s very interesting and am interested in other people’s thoughts.
Dylan – do you think you can still get that same sense of personality and get to know someone even if they don’t have a lifestream? I think that most people could tell a lot about me from my blog and Twitter stream alone. But, I do see how adding a lifestream to the mix would allow for some more info and context to come up. With few exceptions, I haven’t felt as though I’m lacking info or context about the people I follow online. I can learn a lot about them and their personality from Twitter, Facebook, or their blog.
I like your idea about tag or category subscriptions. That gives people a choice of very specific information about you that they’d like to receive, no matter what platform you post it to. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and I’ll certainly keep thinking about and playing with this topic.
Oh no…now you really do need to do “Everything I learned about social media, I learned from Barry Manilow” suggestion via Arik Hanson.
I’d definitely have to figure out how to work Copa Cabana lyrics in there somehow…
You are the first person who attributes sites like Posterous to lifestreaming. Maybe I’m jaded from being online longer, but when I think about lifestreaming, I think of JenniCam and DotComGuy: experiments from the late 1990s involving 24/7 web cams and chat rooms with a nonstop stream of one’s life.
You could go to the principle of BROADCAST media and call that a lifestream. Maybe a station and not a person, but does not “60 Minutes” or “Sesame Street” or NPR’s “This American Life” have a lifestream?
Hi Ari. I don’t think by any means I’m the first person to think of Posterous as lifestreaming. If anything, Steve Rubel probably did more than anyone else to engender that connotation.
The semantic difference between broadcasting one’s life online versus constantly sharing bits of info (posts, tweets, status updates, links, etc.) via the web came up on the original post. Ramsey Mohnsen asked a very similar question and I think Mark Krynsky had a good answer – lifecasting is the term many online “life broadcasters” are using to describe the video content they produce. I actually tend to agree with Mark that lifestreaming may not be the best term, but it does seem to be the one that, for now, has stuck.
I’m with Allan. In fact, now I’m not just asking, I’m DEMANDING a Barry Manilow post. MAN-I-LOW! MAN-I-LOW! MAN-I-LOW!
In all seriousness, the group lifestreaming idea is very interesting. I’m with you though, Amy. I just don’t see a lot of extra value in the “between Twitter/blog” argument. Really, is there *that* much room between the two. If you have enough time to update Twitter regularly, post on a schedule AND update a Posterous account, well, I think you may have a little too much time on your hands. Either that, or you’re a professional publisher.
That said, a local newspaper in MSP is using Posterous in an interesting way. They’re using it as a photo collection site–asking readers to email their sports pics from the Vikings, Gophers and Twins (well, when the Twins were actually playing) to a Posterous account and voila, instant fan-generated content. And it’s been pretty successful in terms of number of submissions–check it out: http://ppfanphotos.posterous.com/.
@arikhanson
Amy, first off I apologize for the title I chose and kudos for you to sticking to it. I rushed to send the tweet with the title but upon re-reading your original post you were being inquisitive and this should by no means have reflected an incorrect opinion on Lifestreaming.
Phew, now that I got that out of the way I’l glad you did a follow up. Your summation from the originial post about Lifestreaming filling the gap between Twitter and a blog is a good one. Another key difference is that Lifestreaming allows us to very easily and passively generate content that is shared with others (bookmarking on Delicious, favoriting on YouTube, Reviewing on Yelp are some examples). I believe that sharing all this additional data can be great supplemental content that is valuable.
Your post was one of many that inspired me to write one on understanding the value of Lifestreaming which goes into more detail on what I outlined above. It’s nice to see that you’re open to exploring it more and providing visibility for your readers. It’s not something that is usually conveyed easily. I look forward to monitoring your discovery.
Mark – Thanks for inspiring the post! Lifestreaming is definitely a topic that I’m interested in continuing to explore and discover. It’s interesting to watch what others are doing with it and try and fashion how I might make use of it.
Amy: I find it interesting to see the types of content people choose to publish first via their lifestream. There are aggregated services (e.g. FriendFeed) that can pull in everything, but it’s interesting to see what people publish via FriendFeed/Posterous vs what they post simply on Twitter.
For instance, I posted this Barry Manilow video via Posterous, and from there it went to Twitter/Facebook/etc.
(Arik and I are just…strange. But I think Leo LaPorte started all of the Barry Manilow foolishness.)
Manilow has taken over my blog. I don’t know what happened. :-)
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