Image via WikipediaLast week I read a blog by Jess Sloss entitled, "The Blog is Dead? Why I'm Lifestreaming." The article is interesting and it opened my eyes to the new phenomenon. Steve Rubel, SVP at Edelman Digital, recently quit blogging after 5 years in order to devote his effort to a Lifestream. As one interested in the latest trends, I find this idea intriguing.
In this article, I would like to tell you what I know about Lifestreaming and introduce a tool that will allow you to get involved. If you have no clue what I am talking about, which was me only a few days ago, I ask that you will continue just a few moments longer.
Let me begin by asking a few quick questions. Do you use Twitter? Facebook? Friendfeed? If so, Lifestreaming will most likely affect you in some way. How so? you ask. Simply put, it is a way to avoid getting lost in the crowd.
Recently, I read an article by Jesse Stay entitled, "Twitter Looking to Raise the Dead with Previous Tweets." Stay points out that Twitter posts over 3,200 are essentially lost forever. This means anything you might have shared or written is gone. Man, what a waste of time.
Wasting time and effort are a few of the reasons I returned to blogging. Another reason is that friends tend to miss information I share early in the morning, late at night, or when they are offline. That is unless they read older posts, which many friends will not do. Therefore, unless I spoke directly to a friend, they may miss something of value. Does this sound familiar?
The solution, for me at least, was to create a blog where I can share good information without fear of losing it forever. Today, I can go beyond 140 characters and expand on ideas that matter to me. Additionally, my blog does not require family, friends, or associates to sign up for yet another service just to keep up with me. Everything I do can happen in one place. Cool, huh?
Well, I thought I had it all figured out. That was until Jess Sloss pointed out glitch within the Matrix. Sorry, I mean between my blog and social networking sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed). While the lines may seem a little blurry, I recognize that my blogs are for more thoughtful articles and social networking sites are for finding and sharing cool Internet gems. What I wanted was a playground that I could post my finds, share a thought, and publicly archive good stuff for future use. The answer is Posterous.com.
I will not share step-by-step instructions on how to use Posterous today, maybe I will write one later, assuming someone shares an interest in reading about it. In this article I would like to simply introduce you to the tool and explain how it works.
Based on my experience with Posterous, the web-based application allows you to submit images, video, text, links, and audio to a stream. A stream, which is similar to Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed, posts content at the top of the site and descends down the page in chronological order. The format encourages short blasts of content over long blog articles. Not that writing something more substantial is wrong, but I just feel quick posts are more suitable.
Once published, Posterous can automatically post your content to Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr, Picasa, Vimeo, Delicious, Wordpress, or a blog. If not all, you can decide which content gets posted where.
If that was not cool enough, you can do all of that from the comfort of your cellphone. Yes, earlier today I shared a video captured on my Blackberry. All I did was send the video to post@posterous.com and it submitted the video to YouTube and my Lifestream. Moments later, the video was shared on all my social networks.
Similar to a blog, friends can subscribe to my Lifestream and receive it in their favorite RSS reader (i.e., Google Reader). Posterous allows for comments on the site as well as favorites. If you have a friend on Posterous, you can subscribe to their stream with a push of a button.
At this point, I do not know how Lifestreaming will end up, but find it exciting enough to share with you. If you are curious to learn more or want to join me on this quest, please take this opportunity to visit the site and then subscribe to my Lifestream.
Let me know your thoughts. Until next time...
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