The Web as a Stream: Embracing Technology That Allows Us to Get to Our Conversational Roots
Some more reasoning as to why I took the leap and began a Posterous lifestream when many in the social media/PR/MarComm world said it was a risky move: A lifestream simply represents how my brain works and how I think.
I keep talking about Steve Rubel and how he really inspired me to go forth with this idea, but the man definitely knows what he is talking about, and his own lifestreaming experiment has been an inspiration to me (and many others, I'm sure). Steve has some great points about lifestreaming and why he made the switch to Posterous. A couple of those points I wanted to list below:The web is slowly moving from an architecture of pages, to one that looks like a stream. Such models favor immediacy over reflection.
This is absolutely true. Look at your Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed pages. Do you actually see any "normal" Web pages there? No, not really. What you see is really a reflection of how we talk, communicate and interact with people in real life. This is, a dialogue. So to me, it only makes sense to have a site for my relfections, thoughts, ideas and notes on what I am professional very interested in (PR, social media and MarComm) that reflects the kind of interactions that I have in a normal day with people about these subjects. Otherwise, to be perfectly honest, it seems like to me that I would be shouting down from a mountaintop, which is so 1995, were I to use any other platform. But that is me, and certainly not how everyone else thinkgs.
The stream is where the web is going ... The increasing consumption of content on mobile devices and finite attention spans means there's a greater focus today on immediacy than reflection.
Steve is absolutely right that the stream is where the Web is going (and where it will continue to make advancements in how we communicate and interact with others, both online and in the "real world" One only has to look at this New York Times article about how Twitter and Facebook photos have changed how people who throw parties educate their guests on what actions will be deamed approrpiate at the party, and which ones (in this case, blogging or tweeting about the party), will not be allowed. Simply put, lifestreaming (which really, is what Facebook and FriendFeed have been all along) has simply brought more attention to what humans have been doing all along: communicating and having constant, immediate and changing dialogues with each other. We don't speak to each other in 600-word essays on a screen and then accept comments in (and maybe respond if we like what we read). No, we have an open dialogue that is constantly changing and always evolving. That, to me, is the beauty of lifestreaming and why I am embarking on this endeavor. Oh, and Steve's point about the increasing use of viewing content on mobile devices leads me to one of my great fascinations, stemming from a MediaWeek articlle that reports that 1 in 7 minutes of media consumption now takes place via a mobile phone. That, to me, is incredibly fascinating, as from a PR perspective, it gets me thinking about how we as communicators will do our jobs in the next 5-10 or 20 years. Will we use a mobile device which details that e to directly reach consumers and fans? I plan on going into this a lot more in a future post, but needless to say, it is one of my big professional passions right now: thinking about how mobile technology will impact and help progress the PR and social media industries. So what do you all think? Am I a complete nut for going to a lifestream? Is it too much? What should I be doing differently. Please, let me know. Thanks.
