Library clips

Like FeedEachOther and Spokeo, Streamy is a Social Network RSS Reader, but it’s also a lifestream social network.

Streamy is currently in private beta so my analysis may be helpful but I gather some features are just not ready yet.

RSS Reader

- Add a RSS or OPML or choose from the directory
- Create search feeds (filter), even limited to a few sources…it would be good to limit this to your subscriptions
- read river of news or by feed via the subscription pane (also create folders)
- mark page as read
- 3 views: list, summary, full
- click on title of an item: save, share, comment

You have a save stream (lacks tags) and also a share stream (not posts you shared, but posts your friends have shared with you)

Each feed has its own profile page (called community), it’s starting to remind of MyBlogLog
- Recent posts
- Stats
- Subscribers

There is also a general homepage, with contents by category…it lists recommended posts

Notes

You can post notes, kind of like blog posting, these are mixed into your lifestream…notes don’t have replies

Profile

- manage your saved items and filters
- your location and friends location on Google Maps
- list of friends (can’t see a friendstream within my space)
[UPDATE 13/09/07: you can’t see a friendstream, it’s more of an action stream or share stream as mentioned above, of your friends notes and link sharing, they call this “downstream”]
- IM
- I don’t see private messages
- I don’t see a comment wall
- subscription list
- filter list
- lifestream (notes and save items also appear in this stream)
…what about comments I leave everywhere, where are they stored
…can’t filter lifestream by type, can’t see just my notes (when I click on my friends list, it has a link to their notes archive, I just can’t get to my own)
- list of lifestream sources…can’t add a feed to my lifestream, can only select networks from a list
- groups

Groups

This is when we get into Group lifestreams, like Mugshot (only Mughot doesn’t have an RSS Reader module).

- members
- forum
- group chat
- notes…appear in the group stream (these don’t seem to appear in my personal lifestream)
- group stream also displays a title of a shared item (I thought it would have another stream as a members mixed lifestream, like Mugshot)
- then there is a Share stream (these are the items shared by group members…I know the group stream has this, but the shared stream has the actual shared item).
…a share stream page looks like a feed subscription, others can subscribe to it, just like they subscribe to a blog feed
…like a blog feed has a community page, a share stream has a group homepage.

Networks

This feature is not working for me yet, but perhaps it’s groupings of people based on common data, like location, kind of an on-the-fly informal group shared stream based on similar subscriptions, or similar location, etc…

[UPDATE 13/09/07: this is a list of groups and friends, clicking one can start a chat session]

Search

People (lacks people tags), Stories, Groups, Sources

Drag and Drop

Click on a story title and drag
- bubbles appear to share, save or email the story

Click on a feed source and drag
- bubbles appear to community page, subscribe, browse stories

Click on a user and drag
- bubbles appear to send IM, see profile, see save stream

Click on a group and drag
- bubbles appear to group chat, group home, group thread (forum), group share stream

Also drag an object on a person or a group…drag a person into an IM chat

Summary

Streamy is a work in progress but it’s quite an achievement, a social network around an RSS Reader, share links and chat with friends, infact create explicit share groups and streams (which can also be subscribed to).

This is what it’s all about, having your own subscriptions…and being able to network and share links, capitalising on friends as an attention filter.

The groups feature takes it that step further, imagine this…a group of friends each have an RSS Reader and share links into 10 topics, these 10 topics contain quality posts on these topics based on your friends. If another 10 people had a similar group you may not like the links they share in this topic…so it’s all based on your network of friends, as you know what each other like, plus you can learn more about each other by using forums and chat, and leaving notes.

Now just say an 11th friend comes around and joins Streamy, but they don’t want to join your groups and they don’t want to subscribe to feeds, even feed filters aren’t qualitative enough, they don’t like wasting time reading through posts they don’t like…an hour a day is very precious.
But what they can do is subscribe to the 10 share feeds from each of the 10 groups, since they have the same degree of interest as you, they know these posts will be quality posts.

So this friend is not subscribing to feeds, but subscribing to 10 social circle attention filtered feeds, each on a topic. This is a great way to read news, no feed overload, no wasting half your day, no frustration, just reading quality posts one after another…what you don’t see won’t matter as it would of surfaced to the top as you have 10 friends (your trust filter) on the case plucking out just the gems.

Check out the Webware blog for some preview screenshots.

I’ve got 2 Streamy invites, who’s up!

Technorati Topics seems to be an inhouse version of the Technorati Favourites idea, here’s my favourites for the topic/tag web 2.0 (this is a bit outdated, but it will do as an example).

What you get from Favourites is the lastest posts from a selection of blogs I have chosen in this tag/topic, you can also get a list of the source blogs.

Then you have Technorati Tags, which lists the lastest posts from author tagged blog posts in the blogosphere, here’s the latest posts from the tag web2.0, you can also look at the source list.

Then we have the Technorati Blog Directory, this is claiming your blog, and labelling it with topics, here is web2.0, but you will notice they don’t have the latest posts stream, they once did, but they took it off a while back.

I won’t mention WTF, this is more about your own inhouse blog, here are citizen posts on the topic web 2.0.

So we have latest posts by topic within a few spots: Favourites, Tags, no longer Blog Directory…and now we have Technorati Topics.

Topics is an inhouse selection or source list based on some Technorati rankings/measurements, these sources are categorised into some inhouse topics…here’s the topic Technology.

What you get is a stream of posts, don’t know what happens when they fall off the page, and you get a featured only source list…also we don’t have the luxury to bring explore to us via RSS.

Tags, Blog Directory and Favourites are users doing it for themselves, whereas topics is an inhouse thing, what I mean is Technorati themselves are choosing the sources.

In my Google Reader or even Technorati Favourites, I group a selection of feeds in a folder and click the folder to see a river of news.
So I suppose Technorati is doing the same thing, only their source list may change according to rankings/authority, etc…we only change sources in our RSS Readers based on personal reasons.
Plus we are only seeing popular posts, from these sources…something else our RSS Readers don’t do…aideRSS helps.
Actually there are some clustering RSS Readers like Feedable and FeedEye…and let’s not forget OPML Sampler.

Anyway I see the Technology topic in the realm of Techmeme, megite, and Google News (don’t forget you can customise your Google News, similar to Technorati Favourites, but based on search terms not sources), but not really as it’s missing the big ingredient, clustering.

Hang on, wasn’t this new Topics feature once called Technorati Explore…here’s my post.