AOL Updates Social Aggregation Service
It’s nicer, but not yet as comprehensive, as FriendFeed.
Lifestream is the name of AOL’s new social product launched a couple months ago. It allows you to update Facebook, Twitter and AIM simultaneously. You can also view a feed of your network updates and activity in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Digg – and now, MySpace, and Foursquare.
When they add Gowalla and Google Reader support, I’ll really be set.
Noticeably missing is the ability to Retweet something in your Twitter feed. This is the only thing keeping me from making this my default Twitter app. (This is especially weird considering you can comment on Facebook updates via Lifestream.)
As part of this week’s update, you can now access Lifestream via web, as well as iPhone and Android mobile apps. It’s super-easy to use. The UI is a thing of beauty.
There’s a search function to help you discover new content and people to network with. Though, since Lifestream is new, right now it returns mostly AIM statuses.
Here are views of the iPhone application, which is extremely well done:
Whether or not AOL can gain the popularity of FriendFeed remains to be seen. They have a lot going for them with the millions of AIM users. It’s a really sweet product, and with a couple of updates would truly be unmatched.
Plus, if they can be a leader in this space – that will have awesome implications for AOL in the social/real-time search space.