Violet Mae Lim

Today, the darling of socia media, Twitter, announced it would be adding a geo-location feature to tweets.  Currently, all the early adopters are fawning over Foursquare, before that it was BrightKite but Google Lattitude never really got on the map (no pun intended). There are also lots of other location based social networks and apps.

Geo-location based social networks are on the rise. Is this the next wave in social networking? Venture capitalist, Fred Wilson, sees a lot of value in location based social networking. Personally, I love using location based social networking apps for three reasons:

1. I like discovering new places in whichever city I’m in.

2. Location based social networks  let me see which places my friends are going. I could meet up with them if I’m in the neighborhood or going back to #1, discover new places I probably wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

3. Location based social networks help me meet like minded people, say at a web conference or tech event.

However, everyone I know who isn’t an early adopter is not so in love with this idea. The mainstream think it’s scary, creepy, mundane or don’t see the value in it. Case in point: when I was in Austin for SXSW Interactive in 2008, I used Brightkite.  My phone had never gone off so many times in my entire life. Brightkite was sending me notifications of other people in the tech industry were checking in to all the bars, hotels, cafes etc. I haven’t received a Brightkite notification since then.

It’s not to say that the mainstream won’t embrace location based social networks one day. I’m sure they will. Remember the days when it was unheard of to put your picture on the internet? And now it’s shifted to where it’s normal (almost expected) to use a real picture of yourself as an avatar, as well as post pictures of yourself and your friends. As social networking sites have lifespans, attitudes towards the web and web activity shift. From a marketing perspective, because the mainstream hasn’t embraced location based social networking means businesses should quickly jump at the opportunity to be on these networks. Why? It’s these early adopters who already on these networks that are more likely to talk about you, share tips about your business and pass the word along to their friends.

I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter lately around lifestreaming and blogging. Some say lifestreams are “killing” (ugh, I hate that word in this context) blogs, while others couldn’t care less about lifestreams. My opinion? Blogs are alive and well with the help of their friend, the lifestream.

A lifestream is an aggregation (or collection) of all your social networking activities. My lifestream is here. That’s where you can see in one place, what I’m tweeting, bookmarking, favoriting, yelping, stumbling, flickr’ing and reading, among other things. This particular lifestream is powered by Sweetcron, a self-hosted lifestream software. In order to use this software, you must have your own hosting service and be familiar with CSS as well as a little PHP. My lifestream is where you can see what I’m all about beyond my blog. It’s also a place where you can get a holistic view of who I am through the pictures I take, the videos I watch, the resources and sites I bookmark etc. All of the social networking sites I am active on are on this lifestream, except for Facebook. Only because I haven’t got around to writing the code. My lifestream is a one stop shop for all your Violet Mae needs.

On the other hand, this blog is where you can read in-depth about me, what I’m doing professionally, my thoughts on the marketing, new media, tech, web 2.0, social media industry. My blog is updated less frequently but the entries are thought out (sort of) and much longer than 140 characters. My blog is also a place where I can reflect, muse and ramble– it’s active and requires maintenance. Oppositely, my lifestream is passive and sits in the background but they both support each other in terms of shaping who I am online, what I do and what I’m all about.

Most people I know don’t have lifestreams. In fact, those I know who are not involved in tech or new media find it absolutely horrifying. “WHY would I want everyone to know what I do all over the internet? That’s like, stalker status!” Their very reaction tells me that lifestreaming is going to become very popular within the next one or two years– especially with the shift into real-time web.

In other words, blogging and lifestreaming are so different and each have their advantages and disadvantages. However, they work very well together and I don’t see how one is “killing” the other. As far as I’m concerned, they are both playing happily in the sandbox together.