The other day I came across a link for an artist page on the Foxytunes Planet beta site. I made my way to the Jack Johnson page and on there was able to find videos, photos, song lyrics, similar artists, merchandise links, and more. Doesn’t sound very unique except that all of this is aggregated information across services like Flickr, YouTube, last.fm, Yahoo, Amazon, and a few others.

Foxytunes Planet Beta page for Jack Johnson

Everything is provided on a single page that has the ability to page through the service blocks all the while keeping you on the same page. The method used by Foxytunes is similar to one I wrote about back in February of last year titled creating a Lifestream using Pageflakes. This same method can also be used on Netvibes as I’ve seen used in their Universes.

It’s nice to see unique implementations of social services aggregation. I’m glad that it continues to break into the mainstream. I’m looking forward to seeing more unique uses in the future across many other areas.

Here’s a collection of relevant Lifestreaming news I’ve recently come across

• Tagurself – A service to provide a tag cloud widget based on your APML
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Hyper-connected generation rises – Interesting article from the BBC that covers some aspects of Lifestreaming
• a shel of my former self – An interesting take on Lifestreaming being leveraged by business
• Microsoft’s FriendFeed? | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10 – Discussion of a Microsoft Research project called C2 which appears to be a new Lifestreaming service being compared to FriendFeed
• FriendFeed and 8 Other Lifestreaming Services – Mashable provides tiny bite-sized overviews of 8 Lifestreaming services
• The MLxperience: Using Feedburners’ BuzzBoost to seamlessly republish a Feed as HTML – Good article to re-publish a Lifestream RSS feed as HTML and control the design to make it much nicer
• QIK | Streaming video right from your phone – Gary Vaynerchuck & Kevin Rose talk about how they like SocialThing. Starts around 10:45 into the video
• Feedburner Subscriber Data For Socialstreaming and Lifestreaming | Andy Beard – Niche Marketing – Interesting information on how Feedburner is treating RSS subscriptions coming from Lifestreaming services
• Singpolyma – Technical Blog » Actionstream Plugin Update – Updated 0.2 version of the Actionstream Wordpress Plugin
• “Research streaming”: a new chapter in scientific collaboration? | Daily EM – Lifestreaming branching off into the Scientific community

You may already know that I am a huge fan of the Drupal content management system. I’ve spent the last year deploying and configuring it for all the websites for The X PRIZE Foundation. It’s an extremely powerful & flexible system to use for running a website. A while back I provided a guest post titled “Build a Powerful & Flexible Lifestream Using Drupal“. This was an overview that covered some methods to use the platform for Lifestreaming. It was pretty much a DIY guide using some tools that weren’t designed specifically for Lifestreaming.

On March 10th I came across a new Drupal module called Lifestream and added it to the growing list of tools. This is module was inspired by web designer Yong Fook

Today I was alerted by reader Robert Safuto about a new Drupal project being started by high profile blogger and Lifecaster Chris Pirillo. Here’s a quote:

We’re already set up on Assembla, and have just released the Activity Stream for any compatible Drupal site. If the Drupal community moves quickly, they can populate the default list to the most comprehensive social networking outline on the Internet. The FriendFeed API suddenly got a bit more interesting for you, I bet.

The quote mentions a new Activity Stream Drupal Module which is specifically for Lifestreaming. Based on the description it appears to be a very open and powerful module that allows additional services to be added and supported in the form of “integrations” with a built in API. Another unique aspect of this module that makes it different from many other plugins & scripts out there is that it offers the ability to create each stream item as a “node” in Drupal. Basically that means that a record is created in the database and the stream item is considered a piece of content like a blog post or other item. This means that each item can be searched, promoted, commented on, and managed just like any other content in Drupal.

It’s great to see that with these 2 recent Lifestreaming module releases it has finally made its way to the Drupal community. I think the combination of Drupal and this new Activity Stream module could provide a powerful platform if you want to host your own historical Lifestream or build a community for users to Lifestream. Definitely worth looking into if you are in the market for such a project.

P.s. I gotta give a shout out to the great LA Drupal Group I’ve recently become a member of. You can come check out a case study I will be presenting on 4/29 if you’re in that neck of the woods.

Up until now I’ve watched this battle rage from afar, shaking my head as I read most of the posts and comments that fueled it. The only reason these two services are being compared is because they are both Lifestreaming services that hit the limelight at the same time.

The fact is that these are 2 of the most different Lifestreaming services out there. FriendFeed could be compared to many other Lifestreaming services out there, but SocialThing is not one of them.

As I watch so many new comers posting, commenting, & podcasting in the blogosphere it’s easy to see that most of them just haven’t spent the time necessary to learn about Lifestreaming and don’t yet get it. They see this new trend to jump on, but start to run before they learn to walk.

at least Twitter user Araceli gets itPart of the problem is that Lifestreaming isn’t a well defined term and means different things to different people. At its core it’s about Social Network Aggregation, both our own and our friends. But beyond that there are many layers that can be added to the onion that take it into different areas.

Let me explain the major differences between the two.

SocialThing is aimed at providing you a central dashboard, keeping themselves transparent in the process.

• Imports your friends already made at the social networks you add
• Imports the content generated by friends imported automatically
• Allows posting content to external social networks
• Can’t add friends within their service. Need to add them at social network source
• Can’t comment or “favorite” content

On the other hand FriendFeed is trying to build a community on top of the social network aggregation users provide. Here are the features they offer towards that goal:

• Only allows addition of friends within their service
• Can Comment on imported items (data lives on FriendFeed)
• Can “Like” (flag as favorite) imported items (data lives on FriendFeed)
• Can’t automatically import friends already made on the social networks added (means you also won’t see the content they create)
• Offers creation of “imaginary friend” which allows manual import of friends and data from their social networks

Now keep in mind that this is based on functionality available today. Either service could easily morph into the other’s territory over time, and we will see many variations on the goals of Lifestreaming services change in the future.

So if you’ve been following Lifestreaming services for a while you could see that these 2 couldn’t be any more different than the majority of the other ones out there.

There are some battles brewing over services creating decentralized content away from the content source. I recently wrote about that. Many users are bothered that there are external eco systems forming that they have no way of knowing about. FriendFeed is currently taking this approach. One of the advantages is that you can comment on content without being a member of the social network it came from. I think that’s a big benefit of being part of their community.

On the other hand SocialThing appears to be focusing on being a transparent dashboard for bi-directional communication between the users and their social network sources. That’s currently limited to posting on the service but I’m sure commenting and other data points are coming next. That is great for a user who already has all their friends at each of these social networking sources and doesn’t need or want to add yet another social network layer.

So as you can see these are two very different approaches to Lifestreaming. I wouldn’t say that one is better than the other. Choosing one is a matter of what you want from your Lifestream, and in many cases, you would use both. I am someone who falls into that category. Of course that’s because it’s my job as Chief Lifestreaming Evangelist here at the Lifestream Blog.

Update
Interview: Socialthing! Founder Matt Galligan at ReadWriteWeb by Muhammad Saleem. Matt discusses the differences between SocialThing and FriendFeed.

MyBlogLog released a new feature today that is leveraging their recent “New with Me” Lifestreaming functionality. Upon the release of “New with Me”, MyBlogLog became an entrant in the Lifestreaming services group. So after laying the foundation, and having had time to import a ton of data, they’ve decdided to travel down a different direction with their new “Topics” collaborative filtering.

I think this is a great new path they are taking to differentiate themselves from the Lifestreaming service forrest. So many of the services have a “me too” attitude competing on similar functionality and I think it’s great that they are thinking along new lines. MyBlogLog started out as a community for bloggers to join and discover each other. By taking the Lifestreaming data and using it for their new “Topics” functionality, they are now on a path to extend what makes them great. This seems to align with their mission to provide another way for bloggers to connect based on the content they generate. I think by focusing on this goal they are distinguishing themselves from other services.

Looks who’s on top of the Lifestream topics page. That’s right baby…

The MyBlogLog recent readers widget is arguably one of the coolest ones out there. You see it plastered on blogs everywhere. It’s great to see avatars for friends and new users who have visited your site. I love their cool new widget with “flyout” functionality. It gives a quick glimpse into the user who visited but it’s not enough. I’m hoping they decide to start displaying “Topic” tags for users in the widget. If they do that I think they kill two birds with one stone by giving the blog owner better information about the user & gain them more traction for this new feature by providing a link to the Topics page.

Many innovative features will be spawned from existing and new services with the Lifestreaming data they are acquiring. I applaud MyBlogLog for paving a new path and I look forward to other services following their lead with some more innovative stuff.

You can read about the new functionality at these other fine establishments as well:

• ReadWriteWeb
• Mashable