The Ocean of Streams (life-, friend-, reply-...)

I haven’t posted on this yet, but this summer I fell in love with “Streams” – a new and very different way to think of aggregating and managing your personal communication flows. It’s a fascinating space. I thought Grand Central, Jott and these “Phone 2.0” offerings were revolutionary – get a free phone # online; route calls from it to any combination of phones (your cell, home & work can ring simultaneously); customize voice mails per incoming line (“Hi, honey…” for a spouse’s cell); and, get your voice mails transcribed to text and SMS’d or emailed to you (audio file attached). Wow.

But that’s merely the “Streams” revolution being applied to phones. There’s more.

The interoperability of platforms (from phones to email to FaceBook) and standardization of formats like RSS is opening a big door of possibilities wide. Fuser is just one example: manage all your social platform communications in one place.

…It’s also interesting to witness these technical products mirror the behavior (also evolving rapidly) of my pre-teen step kids, as they casually utilize 4+ communications platforms simultaneously.

Here’s a great post summarizing this chaotic and interesting area of streams.

Ultimately, it seems all communications (from voice mail and incoming calls to email to social platform shout-outs) become one layer, identity becomes separate (yes, Dick), and the variety of spots you plug into it is a third. I suppose that means consumers will expect any “quality” communication platform (such as a phone) to support video (hyperlink or embedded), robust enough in-box management (my MySpace friendings to my “MasterOfNothing” identity), and let go of proprietary (solo-) account structures akin to how email editors can POP multiple accounts.