Facebook's Lifestream: Nothing to See Here
A new post on the Facebook blog announces the arrival of "a new way to share with friends" - that is, they're offering a way for you to import content from non-Facebook sites into your Facebook Mini-Feed and into your friends' News Feeds. This new option is being touted on the blogosphere as Facebook's "new lifestreaming feature." That is, by far, a grand overstatement of the service, which currently pales in comparison with its competitors.
This new import feature, which is, at the moment, offering the import of Flickr, Picasa, Yelp, and del.icio.us info into your mini-feed cannot even be called "a good first start" at this point. Despite promises of Digg integration in the future as well as "other sites," the limited amount of supported services only highlights what a great service this could be if done well.
And by "done well," we mean not only allowing the 3rd party info to feed into the stream, but allowing users to pull the entire stream out of Facebook, too. Two of the most valuable sources for information about the activity on Facebook - the mini-feed and the news feed - still don't offer RSS feeds for users to subscribe to, and it's looking like this much desired feature may never arrive.
Instead Facebook's data feeds only include the status updates of your friends, posted items of friends, and notifications for any user. The omission of the two most critical feeds is, (according to this twitterer) "ironic given they support data portability."
While not everyone is a fan of FriendFeed's increasingly "destination-like" service (says another twitterer: "Facebook's lifestream FTW... FriendFeed wants you to add friends, yet again"), FriendFeed at least offers a wide selection of lifestreaming services - 35 at the moment, including the ability to import a "blog" feed, which essentially allows you to import any RSS feeds into the stream.
Additionally, FriendFeed allows export of their stream via RSS or even via a FriendFeed Facebook app, which begs the question (as this twitterer poses): why not allow FriendFeed users to just import their stream into Facebook's feed, then?
On the AllFacebook blog, Nick is decidedly much more optimistic about the new service's potential, saying
"If Facebook opens up the API for the mini-feed importing feature, Facebook will immediately become the largest competitor to FriendFeed and most likely displace it."
Additionally, he thinks that Facebook could be only one step away from adding a commenting feature to both the news feed and the mini-feed.
While that would be great, with Facebook's reticence to even open up those activity streams via RSS, it's hard to picture a time when they become open services as opposed to what they are today: tools designed to get you to visit the site and play in the Facebook sandbox.
However, all that being said, it's important to also take a look at this offering from a viewpoint outside the focus of the social-media-addicted tech community - something that MG does quite well on his VentureBeat post, "Facebook is kinda competing with FriendFeed, like it kinda competes with Twitter."
Just as Facebook's status updates are no comparison to Twitter, this lifestreaming feature is no comparison to FriendFeed, but it may be enough for the average user. Says MG:
It may be that Facebook users will be satisfied enough with Facebook’s overlapping feature being released today, that they won’t feel the need to also use Friendfeed. It doesn’t mean Friendfeed is doomed, it just might reduce its potential to grow big.
The idea of what's good enough for the average user may leave us techies scratching our heads, watching as so many great ideas coming out of our community - like Twitter, lifestreaming, etc - get sucked up by big sites like MySpace and Facebook, offering these large communities pale imitations of the services we know and love.
However, that very well may be enough for the average user. How sad.
Comments
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As I was just saying on TechCrunch, I’m a bit mystified why a News Feed or Mini-Feed RSS feed hasn’t appeared sooner… the Mini-Feed especially makes a ton of sense, given how much tech bloggers have clamored about sharing Facebook content on their public sites. That would give Plaxo Pulse a little competition too… though perhaps the real hesitation comes from it allowing services like Plaxo Pulse to access Facebook activity data.
I disagree with Nick once again... I can't see how comments on the feeds would add any value to users. It would add another layer of discussion and wouldn't make sense given Facebook's current setup. Discussion can come through features like the Wall.
I think once again the contentment of the "average user" comes from the fact that many people are only interested in sharing limited content with a limited audience. Not only are they not aware of features on other services, they don't have much need for them or wouldn't gain much benefit based on their social networking habits.
I'm glad you mention the outside perspective, though - I've seen several cases where tech blogosphere evaluations of Facebook differed greatly from the experiences of friends who are not as active online.
Posted by: theharmonyguy | April 15, 2008 3:27 PM
Nothing to see here... except the next step towards the commoditization of life streams.
Posted by: Fraser | April 15, 2008 4:34 PM
MG fm VentureBeat has it right, and much of the comments I see here seem to reflect the Silicon Valley bubble perspectives. Most Facebook users couldn't give a rat's ass about FriendFeed. Once you've connected to all your friends on Facebook, why would you want to start all over again. Heck, my friends are pretty sick of connecting to various services as it is.
Note fm MG's piece in VentureBeat that not many people under 26 are using Twitter either. I for one, have stayed away fm it like the plague even though I'm older and generally into these new services. It's great that Facebook put the status update capability and is adding these features so that they can ease users into getting this new data w/o overwhelming them into a whole new service. While I'm no luddite, it's often difficult to figure out how every one seems to have so much time to waste on wanting to get data in a million new ways. I use Facebook to keep on top of my friends' activities, whether these are tech friends, non-tech friends, others who like me just want an easier way to check in w/friends, and Facebook certainly has reduced the cost of staying in touch. That's really all that matters for most non-tech geek folks :)
And yes, Nick does have it right, this makes FriendFeed wholly unnecessary for 99% of the people out there. Get over it :)
On the RSS feed export issue, I don't think many people would want to know that because they've friended me and I can now place an RSS feed on a publicly viewable Web page, anyone can know what they're up to. I'd say that skates the privacy line which Facebook is trying to stay on the right side of. When I allow my friends to see my info by friending them, this should not open the flood gates to having this content dispersed to other places beyond their ability to view this *on* Facebook. While one can argue that they s/b able to keep up w/this fm their newsreader, if by using RSS this means it could also be made publicly accessible, then I'd have to vote against the feature.
Thought I'd throw out another perspective on this matter :)
Posted by: p-air
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April 16, 2008 8:58 AM
@p-air: Facebook already offers RSS feeds for your notifications, your friends' status updates, and your friends' posted items. RSS wouldn't enable you to post friends' information, it would just make it slightly easier if you were so inclined. Facebook includes a key in the URL for each feed so that others can't access your feed (unless you give them the URL). I'm not convinced privacy is the reason we haven't seen Mini-Feeds and News Feeds on RSS.
Posted by: Joey Tyson | April 16, 2008 9:58 AM
@Joey, thx for the clarification on the RSS feed issue.
Posted by: p-air
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April 16, 2008 8:46 PM
good info..i hope been better
Posted by: TRy | April 18, 2008 11:25 AM