Mark Krynsky of the Lifestream Blog wrote a pretty damn intriguing guest post on Louis Gray’s blog postulating that lifestreaming is the next evolution of “what’s next” and I might be inclined to agree with him:
Companies are slowly starting to understand social media. They should also start thinking about how to improve communication internally for a well informed workforce. Creating rich workstreams by aggregating real-time data on an internal network can help achieve this. I see a resurgence of rich intranets like this starting to happen soon.
Data aggregation continues to re-invent itself in other useful ways. I was excited when I first started using Mint.com as I saw it as essentially a vertical lifestream. In this case it was aggregating all my financial accounts to provide a real-time "financestream". But that’s not all that Mint.com does. It’s a very special service and it actually provides the bridge to two areas where I see the web going next, recommendation engines and moving apps to the cloud.
Many services are getting really good at collecting the data and providing ways for us to interact with it. But that will only take us so far. The next phase will be creating intelligence based on the data. The first step to that will be recommendation engines. Strands provides several services including lifestreaming and has recently put up a prize to help them improve this technology. Mint.com provides recommendations on how to save money based on the data. I’m sure we will continue to see these engines applied to many new areas and perfected as they become mature. Source: louisgray.com: Is Lifestreaming a Catalyst for What’s Coming After Web 2.0?
I think Mark’s vision of a river and flow of information, tailored to what you want is what we’ve all been dreaming of. Okay maybe just me.
The key to lifestreaming or infostreaming is that is isn’t based on a set range of sources, but on topics. Yes, search feeds, twitter searches, etc do this, but the key is going to be when we look at a dashboard of information and can pull out what we want.
A system that learns what you like and highlights those. It’s taking what Strands, aideRSS, FriendFeed, TweetDeck and others are doing to the next logical step. Frankly I think we’ve got all the pieces, now the glue, the time, and the money to assemble them…
How could this change how we do things, how we run and manage your life. Could change a lot.
The one thing I don’t really agree with in Mark’s vision is the re-birth of the Intranet. No, what we’ll see are behind-the-firewall versions of these tools and tailored start pages becoming the norm (iGoogle meets Enterprise 2.5). Intranets? Those are just behind-the-firewall datasets. That will always exist, it’s just how the data is streamed and delivered.
Personally the days of the “Department X Intranet Page” are better left gone. Intra-company fiefdoms aren’t helpful or good uses of money. The department x data feed, now that’s a horse of a different colour.
Could the recent Strands application be another of the steps towards this infostreaming goal?
You tell me.
Tris Hussey is a writer, teacher, blogger, and speaker on all facets of Internet life, WordPress, and social media. If you are interested in having Tris speak, teach, lead a workshop or consult for you, feel free to email tris [at] trishussey [dot] com.
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