The service is called Storytlr (a play on story teller) and it allows members to create their own lifestreaming service at their own URL. It's similar to the recently launched services Swurl (our review) and Sweetcron, but Storytlr has a few really neat tricks up its sleeve.

After you've signed up you are requested to complete the now predictable yet painless connecting of your twitter, flickr, last.fm etc. accounts. So far so good.

One of the cool things that Storytlr surprises you with is that it allows you to manually insert your own content directly onto the site. This content can be a simple tweet-like message, a full blog post, an image or even an audio file. I love that Storytlr imports all Tweets but it automatically hides all @reply messages so they don't clutter up your lifestream and don't get published to the public unless you specifically request that the are.

The end result is essentially a blog, see mine here, where visitors can comment on your content the same way you would on any normal blog. Storytlr offers a number of widgets you can include or remove and four customizable themes.

And Now For Something Completely New

Storytlr brings something completely new to the lifestreaming game and this part is where it gets its name. We discovered the service in a post by Ernst-Jan Pfauth titled "No more standard lifestreams please, be creative!" This part is where Pfauth gets his wish. You'll notice a tab on your public profile where you can create "stories". You can think of "stories" as all the tweets, posts and media about a particular event compiled into one. A story is like a topical collection of items. To create a story is very straightforward, simply select the dates this "story" or event occurred and select which content you would like to have included. Storytlr puts all this together into a little slideshow showing all your selected tweets, videos and photographs. You can see an example of one by clicking the image below.

Storytlr really does bring something new to the lifestreaming fanatics out there and I plan to make the most out of it myself. There is still room for improvement and a few bugs to iron out. I would love to be able to customize the design of my Storytlr site entirely and I would also like to see my content added much faster (think Friendfeed fast). However, for a brand new app they've done a fantastic job with both concept and implementation.

• Tumblr - Tumblr is a microblogging application that also allows the inclusion of activity streams from other services.
• Onaswarm - Onaswarm, which is in private beta, is a dedicated lifestreaming app that supports a wide variety of other services.
• Jaiku - The chief function of Jaiku, as a presence app similar to Twitter, is enhanced by letting users aggregate activity from outside services.
• Lifestrea.ms - Lifestrea.ms -- in closed beta -- is a dedicated activity stream aggregator that quotes our review in the company line by calling itself a "standards based nerve center."
• Soup.io - Similar to Tumblr, Soup.io is a microblogging application. It also supports outside status updates for 11 services and any RSS feed.
• FriendFeed - Due to being founded by a bunch of ex-Googlers, FriendFeed might hold the crown for most talked about lifestreaming app. It supports nearly 30 web sites.
• MyBlogLog - MyBlogLog, which specializes in creating ad-hoc social networks around blogs, just got into lifestreaming with an update last night.
• Profilactic - Profilactic supports 135 sites. Yes, 135 sites. As well as the ability to add your own. Have fun.
• iStalkr - iStalkr is a hub for your social media activity and that of your friends and family, with a unique approach to lifestreaming that puts your life on a timeline.
• Correlate.us - Correlate.us creates a river of activity for a handful of supported sites, and graphs which sites you use the most, all with the design sensibilities of del.icio.us.
• ProfileFly - Focused on social networks, ProfileFly creates a replacement profile that mashes up status updates from your existing social profiles.
• Second Brain - Second Brain takes takes a slightly less automatic approach to life streaming by asking that you categorize and group your activity into collections. See our review.
• Explode.us - Explode.us is a social media search engine that also offers "a profile to consolidate your various online presences."
• liveZuu - A lifestreaming application that supports 28 networks and offer a Facebook app.
• OneSwirl - A newer dedicated lifestream aggregator that celebrated its first public release today.
• Socialthing! - Currently in closed beta, Socialthing! is a promising lifestreaming service that offers a nifty-looking iPhone optimized version. They're planning to release the service at SXSW.
• iminta - iminta keeps you up-to-date on what your friends are "in to" and lets you share your own activity stream.
• Plaxo Pulse - Most famous for helping to get Robert Scoble temporarily banned from Facebook, Plaxo's Pulse product lets you aggregate activity from a wide variety of third party services.
• Identoo - A fairly standard social streaming site.
• Escaloop - Escaloop is a free-form lifestreaming app that lets you combine up to 20 RSS feeds into a single stream (yeah, there are other RSS mixers out there, but Escaloop is notable on this list for specifically targeting lifestreaming).
• Hictu - Hictu is a video microblogging app that supports importing activity streams from outside services.
• Life2Front - Life2Front's LiFE-Line activity stream feature is a functional activity stream aggregator, if not the most attractive.
• 30Boxes - The online calendar app also has lifestreaming capabilities.
• Readr - Readr mashes 21 different sites into a single profile feed.
• Suprglu - Suprglu pulls content from the web services you use and then republishes them in blog format.
• Where is me? - A lifestreaming app that pulls from 11 services or RSS feeds.
• Slifeshare - Lifestreaming via a Mac OS X application (Windows promised soon).
• MovableType ActionStreams - For do-it-yourselfers, MovableType offers a lifestreaming plugin for their blog platform.
• SimpleLife - More for the DIY set, SimpleLife is a lifestreaming plugin for Wordpress.
• WP Lifestream - Another lifestreaming plugin for Wordpress.
• RSS Stream - You guessed it, a third lifestream plugin for Wordpress.
• oneConnect - Yahoo!'s oneConnect mobile service includes activity stream aggregation features.
• Facebook (?) - Rumor has it that Facebook will be opening up the news feed to outside service updates.
• Socialstream - Nothing has come out of it yet, but this Google funded academic project at Carnegie Mellon University into lifestreaming has garnered a ton of press attention.
• Jeremy Keith's Lifestreaming Script - Jeremy Keith's lifestreaming script was one of the first and inspired some of the services on this list.

Are there any we missed? Which is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below.

As of now, LifeStory only displays your updates from within Bebo. While LifeStory features an interesting user interface, it would be nice if it could also (optionally) pull in updates from your activity stream.

In the long run, Bebo is also planning to allow its users to subscribe to updates from brands, bands, and celebrities, whose updates will then appear in their LifeStory timelines.

Lifestream

The new lifestreaming feature was built on top of SocialThing, a small startup that AOL acquired last year while it was still in private beta testing. The new Lifestream looks like a very basic version of FriendFeed, though it doesn't feature too many functions besides the straightforward aggregation of updates from you and your friends. The simple fact that it also aggregates your friends' updates, though, does give it an edge over Facebook's newsfeed.

New Layout

In addition, Bebo also introduced a new layout for its user profiles, though Bebo's users seem to be rather unhappy about this change.

Differentiation through Aggregation

According to the Guardian, Bebo argues that it is different from Facebook, because "Facebook is a closed, proprietary network that brings friends together through one website."

Clearly, Bebo is trying to differentiate itself from other social networks by becoming more of an aggregator. Thanks to Bebo's SocialInbox, you could already aggregate your friends' updates on other services, even if they aren't Bebo members. Bebo also allows you to check your Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail accounts from within the service.

So what is Socialthing!? It's described as "a digital life manager that puts what you do online into one place." In fact it was one of the 35 lifestreaming apps that Josh Catone profiled earlier this week. Josh wrote about it:

"Currently in closed beta, Socialthing! is a promising lifestreaming service that offers a nifty-looking iPhone optimized version. They're planning to release the service at SXSW."

Clever marketing move by Socialthing to release their app at SXSW. Right now it looks like a dark horse for SXSW Breakout App. But check out Marshall's post and nominate some others!. Some extra incentive: tomorrow's comments competition winner will also be taken from that post.

The service is in private beta, but readers here who request accounts and include the letters RWW in their entries to the request form will be given accounts promptly.

The feed discovery process is very nice; Onaswarm lets you enter various usernames you use on different sites, then searches for RSS feeds based on those usernames. I like it.

Item display is a bit unorthodox but I think I like it. The most recent time that a certain feed updated is displayed, followed by other updates from that same feed from earlier in the day, followed by the second most recent feed to have updated. It's hard to explain and it wasn't completely clear to me, but after asking for clarification it makes sense.

You can view all of someone's updates or just "front page" level, or high priority, updates. That's a nice touch.

Adding friends should give you an opportunity to send them a message, but it doesn't.

OpenID login is supported, the calendaring is microformats-based and the note writing process is good. I'd like to get the geeks in Portland, Oregon to join the Portland Swarm so we can keep track of each other's blog posts, tweets, tags and events. Swarm members have group posting privileges, a common calendar and item aggregation.

Onaswarm is a potentially powerful tool. It's like a gestural feed reader for groups. If usability and aesthetics can improve just enough, then this one could become a valued service for many groups of people online.

"I find it really interesting that a little over a year ago (Sept 06) when Facebook launched their news feed feature that it was met with huge resistance from the Facebook community. There were groups started and claims that users were going to leave -- all because they didn't want their personal information broadcasted like the news feed does.

Now we have dozens upon dozens of websites that do just that; and the global web community has not only endorsed them but pushed them forward to be "the" sites to be on. Especially as more and more people join different social networks, the need for these aggregating/life-streaming apps has become a necessity as opposed to an invasion of privacy."

In the future, the company plans to let people subscribe to topics the same way you can subscribe to communities. The aggregated information stream from subscribed topics will be presented in a new profile tab, "New in My World." You can check out some topics here: web 2.0, politics, lifestream. Some screenshots are below.

Tumblr

For a recent episode of Read/WriteTalk Sean Ammirati sat down with David Karp, the founder of Tumblr. Tumblr is a platform that makes it easy to create Tumblelogs - which Wikipedia defines as:

A variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author's creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary. One of the many tumblelog sevices is tumblr.

Read more...

Onaswarm

Onaswarm is a new lifestreaming application from Toronto's David Janes and BlogMatrix. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote that Onaswarm is a smart, interesting service that combines groups, microformats and flashes of really good usability.

It's very text-centric and clearly better for geeks than it is for the artists who like Tumblr, for example. The Onaswarm site architecture and navigation need a substantial overhaul to improve usability, despite some nice touches.

Read more...

Lifestrea.ms

Lifestrea.ms is a powerful new lifestreaming service from Germany that you'll want to keep an eye on. Marshall checked it out and said that it's a real testimony to the potential of the new web that anyone would even try to create something like this company has. Currently in private beta, we hope the company will fix its usability issues and launch soon. Send an email to beta@lifestrea.ms if you want on the list for an account.

Lifestreaming aggregates all your inbound and outbound activity online, see Tumblr or FriendFeed for other examples. If everything under the covers at Lifestrea.ms can be made as good as the front page of the site, then we'll be in great shape. That page alone is a marvel to witness.

Read more...

Soup

Watch out Tumblr, here comes Soup. According to Josh Catone, Soup is an easy to use tumble blogging application that includes two killer features: social networking (kinda) and outside activity streams. It's sort of a cross between Tumblr, Pownce, and a social activity aggregator.

At its core, Soup is a microblogging app, and a pretty easy to use one. Their tumble blog set up supports text, link, quote, image, and video posts. Sign up is a snap (you can actually begin posting to your tumble blog before creating an account), and like Tumblr, Soup blogs can be mapped to an outside domain.

Read more...

Jaiku

Jaiku can aggregate and automatically republish stories from your other activity streams: blog posts, del.icio.us links, Flicker photos, even Twitter updates. In this regard, it is a lot like Tumblr (another service that has a huge lead on it traffic-wise). We think this is the part of Jaiku that Google was interested in when it purchased the site -- Jaiku as an activity stream aggregator, not Jaiku as a presence app.

We heard last summer about a Google sponsored project at Carnegie Mellon University called "Socialstream." Socialstream's goal was to "create a system for users to seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple network." The idea was basically for Socialstream to be a hub for all of your social networking activity -- whether that was on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, or Flickr -- all of your attention data would be collected in one place where you could manage and share it.

Read more...

Finally, you may want to check out What's Next on the Web: a RWW Toolkit for 2008, which features Open Data as one of the 5 big trends Marshall Kirkpatrick compiled resources for. Lifestreaming is a type of web app that will benefit greatly from open data, so check out our toolkit to prepare yourself.

Before we look at apps and other solutions, let's try to nail down just what exactly is lifestreaming. The thing about lifestreaming that is perhaps confusing to some is that the term is this very general, all-encompassing word that can be applied to all sorts of things from a FriendFeed stream to a Tumblog to a full-on hosted stream at a site like Swurl.com.

There are people that argue that sites like FriendFeed are not, in fact, lifestreaming sites because "aggregation is not lifestreaming." There is some truth to that because those types of sites only collect a sliver of your activities, specifically those on the social web, and that's only a small portion of your "real" life. However, short of strapping a camera to your head, there's not that many ways (yet) to truly "lifestream" everything you do. However, by taking this concept to the mobile phone, you're apt to share more about your life than just what you can do when behind a computer screen. The convenience of having mobile tools for lifestreaming will only serve to push this movement forward, and what better place to start than the gadget-du-jour, the iPhone.

Apps For The iPhone

For iPhone users, one of the major benefits to owning the device is the application platform it provides. With apps, you can begin a "real" lifestream - that is, one that acknowledges that more life is spent away from the computer than at it. You would think that iPhone would be a great platform for lifestreaming apps, but there were surprisingly few to be found (so far). We hope to see this list improved in time, if not with apps, then at least with iPhone-ready mobile web sites.

LifeCast

The LifeCast app is one of the first iPhone apps that allows you to easily lifestream from anywhere in the world, no computer required. With LifeCast, you can post text and images to either a Tumblr or Blogger account. (Blogger users need to use Picasa, though). The app is simple enough to use and supports multiple lifecasts, so you can have one for work, one for personal use, etc. For Tumblr users, this app is a quick and easy way to keep your blog up to date when you're out and about, but the setup for Blogger seems a bit more complicated. No other platforms are supported at this time, but that may change in the future, so keep your eyes on this one.

Note: we noticed the reviews of this app in the App Store were mixed, so it's worth noting that LifeCast is on GetSatisfaction if you have any issues. Our tests to Tumblr worked just fine, though.

WordPress and TypePad Apps: Blogs Can Be Lifestreams, Too

Just because a platform was designed for traditional blogging, that doesn't mean you have to use it that way. With a decent theme and layout, even your TypePad or WordPress blog can be transformed from a long-format site filled with articles to a lifestream. The beauty of this solution is that you can keep the content flowing - photos and short updates while you're out and about - and still occasionally interject a longer post when you have something to say. Will this be a blog that attracts the attention of thousands of followers? Probably not (well, unless those uploaded photos are extremely compelling if you know what we mean), but it would certainly be a nice way to for an extended family to share their photos and activities with each other. Both TypePad and WordPress have iPhone apps available for download.

Previous Coverage: WordPress Comes To iPhone

The Social Media Lifestream, iPhonized

Although sites like FriendFeed get a lot of credit for being a "lifestream" portal, as noted above, they're really more of an aggregation of your activity across the social web. If you Twitter from your iPhone are you really lifestreaming? We'll leave that up for debate, but needless to say there are a number of sites that let you lifestream (and interact with the lifestreams of others) from your iPhone.

As you use the "real" internet on your iPhone, your activity on the social web can be piped into a service like FriendFeed, SocialThing, or Lifestream.fm. But to tweak it - you know, hide some entries add comments to others, post a link, etc. - you'll need an iPhone app or iPhone-enabled site. That's where sites like FriendFeed To Go (www.fftogo.com) can help. But since both SocialThing and Lifestream.fm are still in private beta, they aren't much use to the average user just now. However, if you're lucky enough to be in on the private beta, check out www.socialthing.com/iphone. Lifestream.fm doesn't seem to have iPhonized themselves yet. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any actual apps for these sites though.

Image Courtesy of the Lifestream Blog

What's Missing?

Of course, the biggest thing missing from the iPhone is video - how can a lifestream be complete without that? Without the ability to record and upload video from an iPhone to a service on the web, any lifestreaming solution for iPhone will just be a little bit incomplete. (For non-iPhone users, though, VentureBeat had a great summary of tools for broadcasting your life).

As far as what else is missing, it can be summed up in one word: apps. Even Swurl, whose lifestreaming platform we praised earlier this year, doesn't have an app or iPhone-enabled web site available. And then there are the smaller players like Profilactic and SuprGlu and the like, who could have potentially used the new iPhone platform to launch their sites into niche success stories. Unfortunately, it seems, lifestreaming is still too new to be worthy of much development yet, Sweetcron withstanding. That's a shame, because more and more blogs are incorporating or becoming lifestreams every day. But just who is going to give us the tools we need to keep them updated?