A while back I got an IM from Kelly Abbott telling me I should create a feature matrix of all the Lifestreaming services out there. I thought it was a great idea but knew it would take me a while to do it. I chose a handful of services that I feel currently had feature sets worthy of comparison and had been building it over time in Excel and finally completed it and decided to hunker down and create a nice table for it today. So I present it to you and hope you enjoy it. If you have ideas, features, or other comments that you feel could make it better, let me know as I plan to update it regularly.
6 thoughts on “Lifestream Services Compared in a Feature Matrix”
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Nice stuff, thank you Mark ! :o)
I noticed you check import OPML feature and nothing lifestream network support it… I worked on this way while Yahoo! Hackday at London ;o)
NB: why not add “OPML export” row ? ;o)
Thanks Olivier….actually “Aggregated Lifestream RSS Feed” feature in the matrix is a single feed with all of them but I think I can add OPML export as well. Thanks.
So you’re at Hackday eh? Find Jeremey Keith and say hi for me 🙂
Mark –
Great work on this. I was looking at this again today and I thought it could benefit from some brevity. Just a personal peeve, perhaps. But it would be helpful, I hope, if you put on your editorial cap and maybe picked no more than 10 of your most important features to create the matrix from. Just thinking that there are really too many features listed here to be helpful in picking one lifestream over another.
Perhaps you could accomplish the same with a score? I suppose you could count all of the Y’s and include a tally at the end? Does more mean better? Food for thought.
Also, it would be nice to link to your reviews of each service from the matrix itself (instead of the sites themselves). I think your reviews are well-wrought and if someone is looking to read more about the sites you are comparing, then I think they would be willing to hear you out before clicking through to those site.
Last, since my take on Lifestreaming is so different, it would be nice if there were a notes field, perhaps, that mentioned something about our particular *angle* on the Lifestreaming space. Dandelife is about memories. Or, as Chris Messina says, “Presence is ephemeral except in the retrospective aggregate.”
To Kelly: I think we need 2 lifestreams on same page ; first for our permanent content as post, photo, digg and favorites, or video. And twice for ephemeral content as twitter/frazr, cluztr visited pages, lastFM listen music, dugg votes, wakoopa stats usages, etc.
It’s hard goal which I try to catch on LiFE-Line profiles ;o) .oO(Will they like new Shorties-Top-Box next week ?)
Kelly, thanks for the feedback. I actually toyed with a scoring system and may either incorporate that into this matrix or create a separate one. I like the tallying which may be useful to provide sub-totals for each area (account setup, editing, etc.). I will also link to my reviews when available as you suggested and I like the notes / angle idea as well as each of the services usually has different primary purposes.
Mark, once again you rule! I started putting together a design doc which would include a feature matrix, but you’ve beat me to the punch 🙂 Thanks again. You could make this a web editable spreadsheet.
AFeedA – first stab
Account Y, N, Y, N, Y, N
Editing Y, N, N, N, N
Social N, N, N, N, N
Extra N, N, Y, Y, N, N