Very cool, now I just need to find a few minutes to create my own custom theme.

If you’re paying attention to the buzz on FriendFeed (see below for snippets) then you’re more than aware that a pre-alpha lifestreaming site called Streamulo.us is prepared to the be the one and only destination site for your media aggregation needs.

Daniel Smith’s blog post breaks the news about his recent machinations, and manages to insightfully prepare us for what is to come. Here are some memorable quotes:

This service is admittedly still far from market-ready, but if Cuil has taught us anything, it’s that being market-ready is extremely over-rated. And so, in true web 2.0 fashion, I’m excited to launch my startup prematurely so that you, the user can risk all your data help me iron out the wrinkles and improve the service prior to the “real” launch.

On Streamulo.us, all the activity of all your friends from every aggregation service that has ever been launched (and 2 that don’t even exist yet) will be fed directly into your personal stream! No more logging into dozens of services. No more hassle.

Using patented technology that hijacks borrows your identification information for other aggregation networks like those I listed earlier, and exploits makes use of weaknesses in their respective APIs, Streamulo.us will be able to tell you everything your favourite friends have been up to, whether they want you to know or not, in one quick glance.

Curiosity piqued? I’d recommended reading the entire post, checking out the FriendFeed remarks, and then of course if you’re still interested you can add your comment here and I’ll hook you up.

Update – in case you missed the obvious, and you wouldn’t be the only one (I got several DMs for invites), Streamulo.us does not exist, and the entire thing was a prank (prank is actually a tag on this post) courtesy of Daniel Smith, who nearly got me to fall for it. Read Mike Fruchter’s blog post for more details.

In case you slept in this morning, you missed the launch of, and subsequent mad dash of FriendFeeders and Twitterers to, Identi.ca, which is really just an Open Source version of Twitter (think Twitter + the enterprise) without the bells and whistles (coming soon) that Twitter has been dangling over our heads for the past few months. Of course I was part of the mad dash, and you can find me on Identi.ca as jbruin, and here’s a little snapshot of my home page. Looks like an ugly Twitter right?

As the RWW piece points out, one instantaneously digestible bonus to Identi.ca is that you can post and receive updates via IM, which of course is what I’m doing just because Twitter won’t let me and the nifty AIR clients haven’t been developed yet.

Is Too Much Micro-Blogging Making People Sick?

With the excitement and enthusiasm of a working version of Twitter, there also comes a growing sentiment that we’re all reaching micro-blogging capacity. We’ve got the obvious sites like Plurk, Jaiku, Pownce, FriendFeed, Brightkite, Twitter, a handful of lesser known sites, and even Facebook updates, that make the business of updating one’s status online or via SMS ubiquitous, never-ending, and impossible to manage.

Status update management becomes a tricky business and sites like Ping.fm are there to “help,” but they complicate the picture even more because if your tweets are already feed to FriendFeed and Facebook, and your Brightkite notes are feeding Twitter, there creates a rather unruly mess to unravel the status update web. I constantly find myself thinking, “so how many different sites will I be updating if I post this message, and how many duplicate entries will appear in Twitter and FriendFeed.” It’s one big headache.

As human beings we can only consume so much micro-blogging content and services before we reach capacity, and feel the need to purge whatever it is that is weighing us down. Something’s gotta give. So, who’s going to be the first die? The Inquistr post on Identi.ca suggests that the Twitter whale could be dead in the water, but I tend to think Twitter will live on – much like MySpace became the social network for the mainstream and Facebook emerged as the better alternative. What do you think?

Have you tasted the FriendFeed kool-aid? There’s something a little sweeter than honey that is attracting plenty of early-adopter buzz and sucking in even the early critics, such as myself.

So here’s the problem, FriendFeed is not easy to explain, and it’s value is by no means obvious. I’ve managed to inadvertently make a name for myself as an important San Diego Twitter user and aficionado. I’ve also dedicated some of my free time to organize the SD Tweetup and talk up the myriad of ways Twitter can be useful for people, businesses, brands, and even soccer moms. But talking about Twitter and trying to describe what it is, has been no easy feat. Imagine my dismay to discover that FriendFeed has potentially more value than Twitter (threaded conversations, meme-like relevancy, no-barrier commenting/liking, applications & clients in the works), and is even that much more difficult to describe.

Instead of trying to tackle the “what is FriendFeed” question alone, I put the inquiry out to FriendFeed. The response was not only phenomenal, but the comments were diverse, and the general content was exceptional. I’ve taken two screenshots of the FriendFeed post and the comments (follow along below), but chances are the conversation isn’t over, so you might want to check out the actual FriendFeed post.

High level takeaways:

• My FriendFeed network is smarter than me. I think there’s enough meat in the comments to actually form a really great description. My favorite is Adam Lasnik’s description, “Your friends share photos and favorite music such all over the web. Friendfeed lets you and other friends browse and comment on this stuff.”
• FriendFeed is a much better platform than Twitter to manage responses. Had I used Twitter for the same purpose, I’d still be digging through all the tweets, or relying on Summize to try and thread the Twitter chatter for me. Either way that’s way too much work for me to stay involved in a dynamic conversation.
• FriendFeed has virality written all over it. My post, because it was liked and commented on by some very well respected and followed people, reached a much wider FriendFeed audience than my own little individual network; it actually made it to the top of the “best of FriendFeed.” Cool!
• What’s your take?

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