Woke up to Steve Rubel's update to his lifestreaming experiment, and that---plus the fact that I have an actual free morning---has prompted me to jot down a few ideas that have been poking my brain lately.
My starting point is still that no one (not even me) is interesting enough to NEED an actual lifestream as intended by the concept (notably, an online place where every single thing you do online can be seen so that nothing is missed). The lifestream concept for me is actually more for my own convenience. If I have one entry point, basically, I spend less time dicking around with various social media sites. I haven't yet found a way to get rid of duplication; there probably isn't any way to do that unless everyone on the Internets comes to a unanimous decision that we are ALL GOING TO USE FACEBOOK AND NOT TWITTER or something like that. This is not going to happen. So some of my friends are tortured by viewing the same photos on Twitter and Facebook sometimes (but not always, because I doubt that anyone reads ALL their tweets, right?).
On that topic, I now have so many contacts on both Twitter and Facebook who consistently post photos on both that I rely on this behavior and assume I'll be able to comment about the photo on Facebook, where it's easier to follow a conversation about it.
All of this discussion revolves around how the hell to use Posterous, though, and I still haven't quite nailed it down. I'm not bothered by that, because all of this social media jazz is transient and not really meant to be definitive. (If you want something definitive, write an autobiography and have it published in an actual book. Tweets are not really meant to be handed down to future generations.) I try to use Posterous in ways that get my material out there for two reasons: either I want people to see something I did (eg, photos) or I think people might be amused or interested by something I saw (eg, links or quotes). I'm still using yFrog for screenshots and true snapshots that are SO transient there's no point in making any effort with them. I'm not putting videos directly on Posterous because the quality sucks. I'm still writing Big Articles on my Wordpress blog, but small ones I'll write on Posterous and crosspost. Some bloglets I write as Facebook notes, which don't go anywhere else. There is no method to this madness that I can see, but it feels vaguely organized to me at the moment. If folks want to follow me only on Twitter, they can dip in and out of the stream at will. If they subscribe to my Posterous, they get more of a cross-section of my interests. Wordpress? Only the medical/technology stuff. Flickr? Only the photos (no snapshots). Facebook? All that and more, plus the ability to beat me relentlessly at Scrabble.
Posterous as a hub with other sites as the spokes does give readers the ability to titrate to comfort: if you want a little of me, ignore the Posterous and grab the RSS for the part that interests you. If you want a lot of me, go all the way to Facebook. In between? Twitter or the Posterous RSS.
Semper gumby.
