2009 Resolution: Aligning Your Lifestreams

Here's a 2009 reslolution you can actually make some work of. Taking control of your lifestreams and aligning them where they make sense. Many of us are publishing multiple streams of our lives that allow us to connect with, broadcast and share with others. Over the years, you may have gotten a bit messy with how many streams you actually produce and how they work with each other. Here's a few tips that have worked for me.

1. Analyze and prioritize your social systems
Go through all of your streams and prioritize the ones that you really care about and use. Think about the content on them and how frequently you keep the stream up to date. The ones with high frequency and content that you think is valuable should go to the top of the list. Think of these as your social systems—the ones that are active are part of your system, if not they eventually become dying planets.

2. Plot out your lifestream junctions and intersections
Once you've prioritized the lifestreams you decide are most important, find the opportunities to intersect them where it makes sense. For example, I am very active on Twitter and used Twitsync nearly a year ago to substitute my Twitter updates as my Facebook status updates. (This service may no longer be working for new users). Having my Twitter updates on Facebook gives me one source to share links and updates though it shows up in multiple places. But for me it's effective. Another way is to take your popular streams and combine them. I enjoy using slideshare and use their widget on the left column of the blog. It's a simple way to bring multiple streams together.  I've also got my delicious, flickr, and blip.tv streams intersecting on the blog. It's a simple way to combine the ones you care about.

3. Aggregate your streams
I'm not a heavy Friendfeed user, but I do like having the streams in one place—for some reason it makes things feel organized. Friendfeed is an easy way to get all your streams in one place—it doesn't take much time to set up. Another way to aggregate feeds is through search. Ligit offers up the ability to specifically search your streams and provides widgets you can put on your site or blog (I'm still playing with the service).

These are a couple of pointers, but really the most important step is the first one. Before investing time in the latest technologies or junking up your Facebook page, blog etc. Think about which social systems are meaningful to both you and your circle of peers/friends/contacts. Then start making them work together. I'd say quality is more important than quality here, making good use of two networks working together (like Facebook and Twitter) could make more sense than simply connecting all of your streams. What are your recommendations? Have any tips you can share?

Comments

[Mike Wagner]

David, this isn't a criticism, but your LifeStreams graphic looks a little like the alien machines in War of the Worlds.

Just sayin'

Keep creating...alignment,
Mike

[David Armano]

Mike, that's a compliment. I love a good Sci Fi flick. :-)

[tommartin]

Great post David. I have been struggling with this very issue myself and now, via your post, I have a road map to follow. Appreciate you sharing the wisdom.

[Mike Wagner]

New SF movie idea, War of the LifeStreams.

You get to play the lead David!

Keep creating,
Mike

[frank]

Hey David ... I think this is great advices. it seems this is an area of using social media that needs constant attention and maintanence.

Robert Scoble just posted something about using FriendFeed for aggrigating everything:
http://scobleizer.com/2009/01/01/got-a-real-time-ego-problem-get-a-room/

I've also seen folks using social mention:
http://socialmention.com/search?q=franswaa&t=microblogs

Do you currently use anything to aggrigate all your streams together? Or at least the significant ones? (Besides pulling into your blog). I'd definitely be interested in seeing how you pull them together, the tool you choose and how you make use of it.

---
http://twitter.com/franswaa

[bonnieL]

Thanks David, now if I could only aggregate my life, I'd be all set.

bonnieL
triiibe on!

[kevin]

I've been using my tweets as updates on Facebook for awhile...but I'm starting to realize that my Twittering tends to be focused on more of a marketing nerd audience, whereas my Facebook is much more personal. Starting to wonder if its best to disconnect the two. Also wondering if I can figure out how to do it...

[Paula Thornton]

Seriously, FB before LinkedIn, delicious, and slideshare?

[DT]

Not possibly relevant, but I dislike Ligit as it cannibalizes my search information. If you are using analytics or on server tracking of your web traffic (vital for any lifestream) don't use ligit. I tried it a while ago, and all my search data was eaten up.

David I dont know about you but I get nervous when my data falls into a hole.

[John Welsh]

Go back and review, review, review!

I used to run my Friendfeed (lots of Web 2.0 stuff) through my Facebook (a non web 2.0 community of friends and former colleagues). I had some great feedback that the content of the former was a real turnoff to the latter - no wonder I had no comments. So I have cut out Friendfeed and gone back to putting up Facebook-only content on Facebook. Not a web 2.0 or social media in sight!

But, again, review, review, review. If my Facebook community were suddenly to get into Web 2.0. I might just reverse it once more!