Lifestreaming - another love hate relationship

I live in Los Angeles. So I know something about love and hate relationships. I love interesting people. I hate traffic.

I feel the same way about Lifestreaming. In short, it's “virtually posting real time updates of your activities.” Taking a picture? Upload it immediately to Flickr. Thinking about buying a rabbit? Let your friends know through your micro-blog.

Early adopters have been doing it for a while with Tumblr, Jaiku, Soup, and Twitter.

From your mothers perspective, it all makes sense. Your family always wants to know what you're up to. Some friends might even care.

I'm torn. When my friends came back from Burningman - again - I checked their pictures on Facebook. (I missed the playa this year - not so much the dust-storms). Many of my friends are creators or producers. They create art, music, or products in their professional lives. Facebook makes it easy for me keep up on their latest innovations or adventures.

On the other hand, the constant stream of personal experiences on social networks networks makes disconnecting hard. If you're not in the stream - how are you going to hold up in conversation? I want to feel as if I can disconnect anytime - not missing anything. Just like e-mail, this bastard is always on.

Regardless of how you feel, Lifestreaming is here to stay. So, you might as well get on with it. Especially if you're a marketer (aren't we all?) here's a few things to think about:

Using common utilities such as Facebook, you can quickly close the communication loop with the people you love, no matter where they are. You can share what matters anytime in real time. This sets the pace for communication: faster than e-mail!

In fact, Facebook's little news-feed represents a big leap in social media. (Yeah, I know there has been others but the wide adoption makes use of Facebook more relevant to more people).

As bloggers have proven, social groups with massive influence forms around those most connected.
Those people who have social graphs with several hundred connections become very valuable nodes in marketing networks. We call them influencers. You should get to know them - or become one.

If you want to take advantage of lifestreaming for your brand - here are a few of the top opportunities:

• Research - massive data pools on actual behavior. With the right tools, you can tap data for intel on behaviour and trends. That's big.
• Real-time intelligence: surfing the actual real-time behavior of millions is pop-culture in motion.
• Marketing: Micro-segmenting based on social graph and behavior.
• Small brands can kick ass: The media landscape is flatter - anyone can do anything to get attention. That means we might get more Tila Tequila and less quality. (I hate the fact that I know her name.)

Now, are you a producer, creator, follower or spectator?

Get your goggles on. It's not a dust storm yet, but it's going to take a while before it all becomes clear.