I’ve just put some of the final touches on my personal lifestream install of Sweetcron. I’m now aggregating all activity from the services I use most. They include my blog, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Seesmic. I’m also scraping a Google Ego Search to pickup whenever someone says my name.
I’m loving this for a few reasons:
- Flow: The setup makes it beyond simple to follow and review my social activity. Much like having my own custom FriendFeed.
- Self Hosted: This all runs from my server, not someone else’s. I control the input/output and layout to any degree I choose.
- Archive: I always say social media is autobiographical in nature. Now I have a backup of that activity just in case.
- Capturing the Discussion: With a service like Disqus, conversation can now occur directly here, on my domain. You can see an example of this from some testing I did.
- My Own Fire Hose: For my favorite stalkers, I give you the Sean Percival Fire Hose. This RSS feed captures just about all of my activity online. It of course brings you back here to see each item.
- Better Net: It is much easier to drive traffic to a domain then a social network profile. Here I have the most freedom and flexibility with my content. Once here I can also easily direct someone to an external presence with a few “follow me here” or “add me there” links.
Rethinking Personal Branding:
Blogs and social media sites will always be a big part of personal branding. That being said don’t forget to create your own personal space too, something you own instead of rent. Don’t just throw up a blog that you never update, give it some life even when you aren’t around.
You’re creating all this content after all, why not capture some of it back for yourself?
Please let me know your thoughts on this setup in the comments. If you’re interested in aggregating yourself or business, please drop me a line.
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Sean Percival is an internet entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, California.
September 29th, 2008 at 12:51 am
I just set up the same thing (albeit not prettified yet) myself here:
http://www.sampletheweb.com/lifestream/
the only thing that I don’t like about it, is that it only really archives the text and links. there is no archive of the seesmic videos or flickr photos or youtube videos. unless I’m missing something. If you see a way to hack it to actually back up that stuff, let me know.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Ya funny I was just thinking about that too. Right now those elements are still linked from their original source. The API for this is pretty flexable, sure it could be managed somehow.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 am
Creating a blog or joining any social media is imperative for anyone who wants to create or build up their personal brand. This is an all or nothing situation though that will take some hard work and dedication, you cant just create blog and update it once a month.
If i understand your lifestream correctly, it is too complicated for the average user, but definitely something that everyone should have at some point in order to monitor their online presence and help aggregate it. For more actionable tips to strengthen your personal brand on the web please visit our blog at http://blog.brand-yourself.com
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:06 am
Whos Looking For More Myspace-Friends FAST?
in: http://tinyurl.com/5z7h8m
August 4th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Ok, so I might be a little late commenting on this post, but I’ve just started ‘life-streaming’ via Posterous. I think it’s a lot simpler for people to set up. You can click my name to see what I mean.