Lifestreaming and Social Media Aggregators

Chances are, you do the same few things on the Internet each day. You probably check your email account(s), update your various social media sites, and catch up on your favorite news sites and blogs. Lifestreaming services or social media aggregators are designed to be one-stop shops for these activities. And then can in fact make your online life much easier. (They can be life-savers if you haven’t been using any such tool and have been trying to keep track of all of your various RSS feeds and social media channels by hand, so to speak.) What follows is a brief overview of the different options currently out there. None of them is perfect, and which one you end up using might be simply a matter of your own individual habits, needs, and tastes.

Google Buzz – The social media aggregator that has been getting the most, well, buzz as of late, Google Buzz has been heralded by many as Google’s attempt to take down Facebook. As such, Buzz does not have the ability to show your or your friends’ Facebook updates, which in my opinion is its fatal flaw. But depending on your own friend circle and social media usage and needs, Google Buzz might be just what you’re looking for. It is a social media portal in its own right, and if you and your contacts are big Gmail users, for example, then it may be just the ticket. If you never got on the Facebook bandwagon, then there should be nothing standing in your way.

Flock – Flock is different than the other social media aggregators mentioned here in that it is actually a browser. Again, this is something that you may either love or hate, depending on the relationship you have with your current browser. It is built on Mozilla’s Firefox. For those people who think Firefox is the best thing since sliced bread (we have a few of them at InfoMedia), this might be a match made in heaven.

FriendFeed – FriendFeed was recently purchased by Facebook, so depending on their strategy in their war with Google, you may be hearing a lot more about it in the future. A capable social media aggregator, it is designed more with social media in mind than for RSS. It also has a fair amount of visibility, having been one of the first social media aggregators out there, but time and Google Buzz may change all that. Stay tuned!

Whichever lifestreaming option you end up going with, there is no doubt that any of these services have the potential to completely change and simplify the way you use the Internet. Check them out, and be sure to let us know what you think!