Review of AOL Lifestream

Aol Lifestream Review

AIM, is now AOL Lifestream a support aggregation application for modern social services Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Flickr, and Delicious. Lifestream offers users the opportunity to managing their incoming friend feeds and outgoing streams via the hardware of their choice. AOL Lifestream is supported on an air desktop app, mobile applications for the iPhone or droid and via your web browser at http://lifestream.aol.com

I downloaded the iPhone app on my iPad, and have been testing out the desktop application. It’s perfect for instant messaging but since I have a larger number of followers on Twitter and Facebook the application is hard to sort out my contacts. For fast browsing or updating your status quickly on multiple platforms, it’s perfect, if that is what you want to do. Keep in mind each one of those social networks are likely to have different demographics, so sending out one blanket message may not always be the answer unless you are in a hurry.

If you are a power user (anyone with over 1,000 followers/friends), I’d still recommend using Hootsuite, TweetDeck or Tweetie because they will help you sort users and manage metrics. I currently still use Hootsuite (for metrics and multi client usage), Tweetie on my iPhone, and Lifestream for fast browsing of all these services.

FEATURES

Geolocation features Text forwarding for messages Trending topics AIM Email service IM: AIM, RUMORED FEATURES TO COME (Just what I’ve heard through the grape vine) See what friends have said about places nearby IM: ICQ, Google, Facebook, & Yahoo FEATURES I WISH IT HAD (But AOL Lifestream doesn’t have these features yet, it’s just my wish list and their is no rumor of the following list coming anytime soon) Metrics and click tracking (Radian6/Omniture style) bit.ly support Skype support Twitter lists A highrise style way of keeping notes on each of your friends, tagging and organizing them. Google Calendar integration (this would make me addicted for life) AOL Lifestream has a lot of potential, especially if it keeps improving it’s features. The one thing it does have going for it is the simplicity. Minimalism is what made Twitter so popular, but like Facebook community rules. Even though a lot of people have dropped off from using AIM, they still have the network that can be leveraged. I’m curious to see where this goes. I’m also excited about all the possibilities because if they implement half of my wish list/rumors this tool would rock for both power users and basic. Even better would be two versions: power vs. average joe.