The Evolution Of Streams
July 10 2011 10:37:11 AM
Add/Read Comments [3]
No this is not a post about fishing.
Sites like Facebook, Twitter and now Google+ have all adopted the "stream" as their core user interface for displaying content. Similarly, most enterprise software vendors like Socialtext, Jive, Moxie, Tibco, IBM, etc have also added some form of stream to their (our) products. However, today streams are mainly "Activity Streams" which show in real time what is happening, and provide some type of filtering options and interaction methods.
I envision the evolution of streams will include different types of streams to help manage the flow of content, including:
- Interest Streams - Display information from the people and topics that you care about the most, and will do so without a lot of manual filtering.
- Attention Streams - Will show the items that you need to take action on ASAP. These will be most important at work, and I think of them as the evolution of GTD.
- Similarly, I think Event Streams can become the next phase of calendar and scheduling.
I have a lot of thoughts on this that I'm going to trickle out over the next little while, but for now I wanted to establish the idea... Interest Streams, Attention Streams and Event Streams.
Sites like Facebook, Twitter and now Google+ have all adopted the "stream" as their core user interface for displaying content. Similarly, most enterprise software vendors like Socialtext, Jive, Moxie, Tibco, IBM, etc have also added some form of stream to their (our) products. However, today streams are mainly "Activity Streams" which show in real time what is happening, and provide some type of filtering options and interaction methods.
I envision the evolution of streams will include different types of streams to help manage the flow of content, including:
- Interest Streams - Display information from the people and topics that you care about the most, and will do so without a lot of manual filtering.
- Attention Streams - Will show the items that you need to take action on ASAP. These will be most important at work, and I think of them as the evolution of GTD.
- Similarly, I think Event Streams can become the next phase of calendar and scheduling.
I have a lot of thoughts on this that I'm going to trickle out over the next little while, but for now I wanted to establish the idea... Interest Streams, Attention Streams and Event Streams.
I'd like to come up with some meaningful metaphors around creeks, rivers, lakes and oceans.
Just wanted to tell you how nice you look out there in the mist in your fishing gear! :-) Oh - and thanks for the great posts on G+ as they help me digest the new offering from Google.
I think you are absolutely right about streams. Even more powerful would be if all these streams were cross-referenced. I envisioned this in some diagrams here: { Link }
I think the Attention Stream vs Interest Stream is an important distinction too.
Another way I think of it is that we need both Serendipity Streams
(like Twitter, include everything to maximise awareness/opportunity, don't expect to read everything)
and Focus Streams
(like email inbox, limited to certain scope/audience, allowing you to process everything and focus, GTD style).
I'm writing a blog post on this.
Alex