AOL’s $850 million purchase of the Bebo social networking site may pay off after all. AOL announced today the first of a series of major project changes with the addition of lifestreaming capabilities. This is similar to the stream of activity and status updates found on rival social networks from Facebook, MySpace and FriendFeed, but with a twist. Bebo’s lifestreaming integrates these activities and status updates from a range of existing AOL features, including AIM Profiles and ICQ. Yes, the millions of existing AIM Profiles will be migrated over to Bebo this week, meaning there is a good chance you will be on Bebo, (probably without even knowing).
Bebo’s “Lifestream Platform” strategy could take lifestreaming from an early adopter buzzword into the living room and den of nearly every home. Bebo’s “Lifestory” timeline already can aggregate your friends’ activity from Flickr, Twitter and Delicious. Now MySpace, YouTube and Facebook are supported. Whenever a contact does anything on any of these services, you Lifestory keeps track of it.
Will Bebo gather enough mass and momentum to pull people away from Facebook? Not likely, at least not soon. But they could just bring the concept of the lifestream to the mainstream, and regain relevance in the market.
Want another opinion?
- Bebo Zeroes In On Lifestreaming For The Masses – TechCrunch
- Lifestream: Bebo’s new social media aggregation tool – guardian.co.uk
- AOL’s Bebo Social Network to Gain Lifestreaming Features – PCWorld
I would argue that the so-called lifestream has already gone mainstream. They call it facebook. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
It all seems rather pointless unless your lifestream stuff (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr feeds) appear in the profile-page timeline, which they don’t.