Categories: Articles

Lifestream – Centralize Your Online Presences

I’ve been watching with interest how Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion has been using an online feed aggregator called, Tumblr, which has created a unified place for all of Steve’s feeds (or the content that he creates online). You can see his latest Blog postings, twitter, flickr and other updates all in one place, and they are viewable by the last item he has posted. You can even subscribe to this one feed to get everything. He Blogged about it over here: Identity Through Online Lifestreams.

I started my own Lifestream around the same time I saw Steve’s post. You can see it here: Mitch Joel Lifestream.

I’ve managed to fill my Lifestream with Six Pixels of Separation, twitter, del.icio.us bookmarks, flickr and my shared items in Google Reader.

It’s just “there” and I have not done much else with it, other than wonder if something like Tumblr will have any serious uptake as a Marketing and Communications channel.

There are two trains of thought at work here:

1. There are people who just want a feed. They just want to know what’s been updated and when. They’re what I call, the Dragnets. You know, “just the facts.”

2. There are people who want the full experience. They like jumping from site to site, clicking around and experiencing everything in all of its glory. Google Reader is probably not all that appealing to them. They’re what I call, the Aeromsiths. You know, “sweet emotion.”

I know that having a unified feed of all of the content that I am creating online will have its place. As online social networks continue to grow (and as newer ones come into play), individuals will always struggle with how to stay on top of what the people in their social graph are up to.

So, here’s the big Marketing question: now that I have a Lifestream, will it be used (or not) by the Dragnets or the Aerosmiths?

I have yet to truly embrace the idea of Lifestreams as I seem to be a halfie: I like both being notified when a channel has been updated via Google Reader, and I also enjoy hopping over to the actual environment to catch up and really feel the full experience.

For now, I grabbed a Lifestream to have one, test it out and discover if there is (or will be) a Marketing opportunity for these in the coming months and years.

I can see this type of concept really picking up steam as people get overwhelmed with the multitudes of content that any individual can create. Something is going to give and having one, in a centralized location, is a smart move. Even though, I have no immediate plans for the Mitch Joel Lifestream, it just “is” right now… and that’s fine too. It only took a couple of minutes to set-up and it is fully automated.

You can create you own Lifestream over here: Tumblr.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.