ReadWriteWeb

Lifestream.fm came onto the scene back in April of this year and was soon acquired by (once politically incorrect) social bookmarking company, Mister Wong. At the time of their launch, Lifestream.fm looked like just another attempt to compete with social media darling FriendFeed, and one that didn't really offer anything too special. But now that the service is under new ownership, they've been busy recoding, adding features, and fixing bugs. But have they done enough to warrant a second look?

You can find tons of lifestream badges floating around sites. These badges showcase the latest online activity of the author and provides a little more insight into who they are and what they like. Lifestream badges also provides a way to share information with users that have similar interests. We've given you 35 ways to lifestream your life and Escaloop was one of them. So here's a look at their custom lifestream badge.

Plurk, the latest lifestreaming service to make the rounds, certainly has one thing going for it - a sense of humor, albeit an odd one. The site is currently riding a wave of new registrations due to a mention from Leo Laporte, but is it worth your time or is it just another Twitter clone with a prettier UI?

How can people be sure that a blog comment left by "Bill Gates" is from the real Bill Gates? How does your lifestream aggregator know? Web developer Kyle Brady, creator of lifestream aggregator OneSwirl, has proposed a system he calls idAuth that he thinks addresses this issue. idAuth is a "push" system for data that can be linked to a specific identity. Theoretically, it would allow lifestream aggregators to collect data from across the web without the need for RSS/Atom feeds, and verify the validity of the id of the data owner.

Last month, we reported the arrival of Facebook's version of a lifestream when they began offering you a way to import content from various online services into your Facebook Mini-Feed. At the time, the only services available were Flickr, Picasa, Yelp, and del.icio.us. (Digg was added later on). Today, a post on the Facebook blog announces that you can now import from several other services, including YouTube, StumbleUpon, Hulu, Pandora, Last.fm, and Google Reader.

Backlash is probably too harsh a word, but as the buzz around lifestreaming continues to build, some people are starting to question where it fits into their daily lives. Last week, we wondered whether sites like FriendFeed solved the problem of information overload, or merely brought attention to it. Keeping track of all that activity is starting to feel like watching code in The Matrix, and this week, others are starting to feel the same way.