Though a few other lifestreaming sites such as Jaiku and 30 Boxes and services with lifestreaming such as 43 People came first, FriendFeed found its niche among the Google and ex-Google and A-list blogger crowds, and quickly became a hit. Sites such as Plaxo Pulse and MyBlogLog have followed on, but without such popularity. Similarly, Facebook can now feed personal streams from other popular sites into its Minifeed and added commentary there.

Plaxo began as online address book and then calendar exchange, a way to maintain updates by letting users maintain their own profile and chose with whom they share it. This year Plaxo began offering lifestreaming, Pulse, aggregating comments from friends and affinity groups. It also maintains detailed profiles with distinct views for personal and professional lives, and shares them only within categories of contacts.

Facebook became what others could have become, a rich platform and network for modular appliances—small focused applications. Facebook, however, adopts the walled garden approach, akin to Myspace, and works poorly with open architectures and protocols. Those not in verified college, workplace, and organization networks are limited to one regional geographical network.

Run by a Finnish company in accord with European privacy law and standards, but now bought by Google, Jaiku streams feeds for friends and others to discover and read and also channel into SMS alerts. It also imbues this capability for groups.

An amazingly expressive collaborative calendar, in Eventful events can include sub-events and related events in sophisticated relationships. It distinguishes between calendars and groups—which have members and discussions. It also supports microformats, syndication, to feed calendars, feed readers, other applications and browsers.

A rich and expressive collaborative calendar now integrated with Yahoo for easier logins and also as a Facebook application, Upcoming reaches out to your friends to share events. It also automatically incorporates tagged photos from Flickr, and offers both Yahoo and Google custom roadmaps. For events already affixed in time and place, a collaborative calendar beats round robins of mail.

Oriented towards news and journalism, Newsvine features originals stories and linkmarks to stories. As a cofounder with Wired Magazine and the New York University School of Journalism, it also participates in Assignment Zero, a crowdsourced journalism experiment.

An amazingly full-featured and flexible photo sharing site, Flickr has become the buzz for photography on the Web. It boasts one of the most interesting collaborative filters for photography, http://flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ —be sure to see it. My stream includes selected works linking elsewhere.

A Semantic Web innovator, this flexible and powerful linkmarking platform accepts only OpenID and Sxip Identity 2.0 logins. Groups can host discussions distinct from linkmark entries. It also publishes hFolk and hReview microformats. Its tags feeds my Claim ID sidebar tagroll.

A most powerful and flexible linkmarking platform, and unlike others, Faves (formerly Blue Dot) requires no registration. For minimal functionality, it saves user identity in a browser cookie and invitation identities in a coded link sent via mail, so recipients need not register to reply. The coded link also establishes a friend relationship with the recipient, should they also join. In addition, members can group friends, and share specific links only with those groups. It feeds my Tribe and Gaia summaries and other tumblelogs, and marks items i feel worthy of my readers.

Digg began ostensibly as alternative to Slashdot. Its founders found Slashdot too closed, dominated by articles an elite group of editors found interesting. Though Digg used algorithms and not a cabal of anointed editors, many users complained a defacto cabal of frequent users did dominate the front page. In response, January 2008 Digg modified their algorithm to select for diversity and independence. Though it may in effect be more fair, i find it dominated by pubescent boys and articles they find interesting. Though i use it, i prefer Ma.gnolia, Faves, Reddit, and other recommenders.

Outtakes, events, inline skating, friends, photos, videos, links, blog and Buzz

…plus sojourners and villains. I had originally registered with LiveJournal to comment on friends blogs and to post in the Rochester community. Of course, it remains an informative and venerated site.

By the folks at Six Apart, creator of Movable Type, TypePad, and LiveJournal, Vox emphasizes visual design and graphity. Though Vox hosts photos, albums, and collections, it can also import photos from other services in complement. (described by TechCrunch)

Formerly Zaadz, Gaia combines intentional community, social and green enterprise, and conscious capitalism to foster a spirituality and vibe that encourages and enables its members to act and accomplish. Groups embrace ancient concepts, from organic farming and community to spirituality and literacy, and modern concepts, from sustainability and nutrition to social capital theory and economics. It links Amazon items and features a business directory.

Supporting social media and networking with fine-gra