Lifestreaming Comes to Yahoo! with MyBlogLog Overhaul
Yahoo! owned MyBlogLog flipped the switch tonight on a major overhaul of user profile pages and now integrates activity data from other services around the web.
Less than a week after a small investment in the ex-Googler founded FriendFeed put lifestreaming on a lot of peoples' maps - the entry of a Yahoo! property could be a game changer in a market full of startups.
The smartly reorganized profiles let you look at an individual's opt-in exposed activity on sites like Del.icio.us, Last.fm, YouTube and LinkedIn or click over to a view of all their friends' recent activities as well. From your profile page it's easy to see what your own friends in this distributed social network for blog readers are doing on other social networks. It's a very different experience and a lot like other players in the increasingly popular lifestreaming market.
MyBlogLog will be experimenting with different ping rates to refresh data from the other services and it isn't intended for minute-by-minute scanning, but for most people updates of their friends' activities every few hours will be more than sufficient.
Here's my profile page, if you'd like to be friends. I wish Ma.gnolia were a supported service, but more on MBL's shortcomings below.
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MyBlogLog still has a ways to go before it can be as good a lifestreaming service as several others available, but it is becoming a more and more useful way to keep track of part of your community all the time.
The community view consists of the activities of people you have friended in MyBlogLog, and there's little prompting to add new friends. (Two weeks ago MyBlogLog did add XFN support, so there's certainly some standards based work going on there.) Every social app on the market, though, should look at how FriendFeed recommends friend additions, it's a very pleasing experience that's leading to really fast uptake this week.
Meanwhile, the MyBlogLog API is creeping closer to general public availability, the company says. Aggregate friend-streams, if you will (your friends' activities elsewhere in one feed), have been added to the API. When that API was first announced we said it was going to be a big deal. Tonight's overhaul of profile pages is just one more example of ways this service inside Yahoo! is quickly bringing to market technologies that a long list of startups still have behind closed beta walls. Up for sale or not, look out for the best parts of Yahoo!
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Thanks for the great post Marshall. It is much appreciated.
Cheers,
Todd
With so many social networking sites, blogs and other sites out there where you can be social, add your own content and more, I think the development of these "lifestreaming" services is great. Certainly a good way to keep track of what your friends are up to across a whole raft of sites.
Right now, in closed beta, the New With Me data is fully exposed through the API. The first of its kind.
Good way to keep track of friends' activities. Thanks for info.
Wow.. nice tool.
I joined both bloglog and friendfeed. It's cool! thanks for the information.
Marshall,
How does it track your comments ?
Is it through some Movable Type custom comment feed ?
Posted by: pratham.name
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February 29, 2008 7:32 AM
so...Yahoo trying to prove it is still kicking, huh?
first y'buzz, now this...Microsoft will get an immediate status as a huge social network player when they (finally) gulp YHOO
Looks like I'm in the minority by feeling especially curmudgeony about this one. I blame it on the leap day.
While I appreciate what they're able to do with the data, I actually use the service to track blog analytics and activity--a functionality which has been consistently relegated to an area of less and less importance as more social features are added.
Here's hoping that, once that api is available, someone smarter than me builds a way to quickly access my blog stats, since, well, that's kinda what I thought I was using MyBlogLog to do.
@pratham - if you have comment tracking enabled on your MyBlogLog services area, we aggregate any comments that are left on sites running the MyBlogLog script.
@Rick - links to your stats are still there on your profile. You can also bookmark the stats pages and head right there if you're logged into MyBlogLog.
Ian
Product Manager, MyBlogLog
Is this news because MBL is a Yahoo company? There are so many companies who are already doing this, including BlogCatalog, that to elevate MBL's feed to a game changing move is surprising.
The way to get a feel for the real impact of this move is to do a comparison between BlogCatalog's lifestreaming feed and MyBlogLogs.
I wonder how long before blogcatalog adds Lifestreaming services to their network. Does anyone want to bet money with me that it won't be long.
Antony -- I couldn't find Lifestreaming on any Blogcatalog profiles. I'd love to see what you're doing. Can you drop an example in this thread?
Eric,
The dashboard we launched last week has a newsfeed in it which is similar to the lifestream you guys added although the Dashboard is focused more on keeping track of your friends and favorite blogs and the newsfeed is just one part of it. I assume that is what Tony was referring to.
We have not added a single users data (newsfeed/lifestream) to their profile page because we were testing the server load on just the dashboards for now and also because we had not agreed 100% on the formatting.
While the mybloglog profile is now centered around the lifestream our addition of a users feed will be much more minimal with the option to see an expanded view for more detail.
It's just a different approach of how we (MBL & BC) are displaying our lifestream/newsfeed services (via profile vs dashboard) but the similarities do exist. For the time being you can see or subscribe a particular users unformatted feed by going to their profile and viewing their RSS feed: http://www.blogcatalog.com/user/NINE/feed/
In the meantime, if you would like to email me oscar[at]blogcatalog.com I would be more than happy to get your blog added or set you up with a temporary profile so you can go in there and play around. I would love to get your feedback.
I rather use the BlogCatalog dashboard feature which was rolled out a few days earlier. MyBlogLog looks clumsy and is owned by Yahoo, that company the censors Flickr in Germany and helps jailing dissidents in China among others so I try to avoid Yahoo services.