The Steve Rubel Stream

Insights on emerging technologies and trends.
Steve Rubel
Steve Rubel (bio) is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman - the world's largest independent PR firm.

He is charged with helping clients identify emerging technologies and trends that can be applied in marketing communications programs. Rubel also explores these topics on his site, a monthly Forbes.com column and in a bi-weekly AdAge column. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook as well.

Steve can be reached via email at steverubel@gmail.com.

Note: Everything posted on this site is Steve's personal opinion. It does not represent the views of Edelman or its clients.

               

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The Next Big Trend? It's All About Curation

Fact: Information sources are exploding. More information will be created in 2009 than all prior years.

Fact: Attention is finite. We're becoming media agnostic, but when we're interested in something we dig down into our interests.

This is why I and others like Robert Scoble are really excited about digital curation. Facebook and Twitter lists are one level of curation. However, there are others. Posterous and Tumblr are fantastic platforms for soliciting contributions from groups of people around a shared interest. And they're platforms that will enable all of us to curate together.

Here are a handful of places where you can see curation at work (more in the gallery below as well) ...
  • My Parents Were Awesome is a group-contributed tumbelog that honors our elders. It has received national recognition.
  • PopURLs Brown by UPS curates information all around business news (UPS is an Edelman client but we didn't build this site)
  • Microsoft and Nissan have built entire brandstreaming sites that showcase conversations around their brand (Edelman built the Nissan site)
  • Sawhorse Media is creating a next generation media company by curating tweets in different topics like pets and now lists too
  • IBM is using Tumblr to curate ideas for a smarter planet
Do you agree that curation - both automated and human-powered - is the next big thing? This isn't just aggregation. As I wrote in my initial post on the subject it's about separating art from junk online.

           
Click here to download:
The_Next_BIg_Trend_Its_All_Abo.zip (1779 KB)

Filed under  brandstreaming   curation   lifestreaming   Posterous   trends   Tumblr  
34 Comments
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Posted 4 months ago

Julio Ojeda-Zapata on the Potential for Newspaper Storystreaming

via Posterous powers "storystreaming" at the Pioneer Press

Julio Ojeda-Zapata explainsl how the St. Paul Pioneer Press used Posterous to solicit photos from readers in reporting the Packers-Vikings game over the weekend.

Filed under  Lifestreaming   newspapers   posterous  
2 Comments
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Posted 4 months ago

Posterous Catches Friendfeed

Data via trends.google.com

Since it was acquired, I have basically abandoned Friendfeed. I love the service, but I am waiting to see how the team integrates it into Facebook.

Unsurprisingly, traffic to the Friendfeed site has plummeted since the acquisition in August. And Posterous now has nearly as much traffic (Posterous is the red line above), but trails Tumblr by a wide margin and Twitter by light years.

What does this say about the future of lifestreaming services? I still see a big space in between in between blogs and Twitter that allows you to have a hub and spoke strategy and post in multiple formats. That's one reason I am bullish about both Posterous and Tumblr.

Filed under  Friendfeed   Lifestreaming   posterous   stats  
47 Comments
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Posted 5 months ago

Lifestreaming: Newspaper Uses Posterous to Solicit and Publish Reader Photos

You're probably sick of me talking about Posterous, but it's been about a year since I have been this excited by a new platform and its potential to change how we publish. I don't know what the future is for the company (and no, they aren't a client), but I love its simplicity, its hub and spoke model and its collaborative features. But don't just take my word for it. Check out how others are innovating.

John Bridges, a reporter with the Austin American Statesman, today is using Posterous to solicit and publish reader photos documenting a "day in the sun." Readers can submit their photos via email to post@austinheat.posterous.com and then approved images get added to an aggregate Posterous site you can find here. Brilliant.

I bet that others in the media will catch on soon and realize what you can do with this elegant, simple platform. We often overlook that the media helped Twitter go nuclear. Friendfeed was a bit to geeky to engender the same response, but Posterous I bet is simple enough that the media will start to put it to use in creative ways. This is the first example I have seen.
Filed under  citizen journalism   journalism   lifestreaming   media   Posterous  
12 Comments
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Posted 6 months ago

Lifestreaming: Follow Your Posterous Peeps with RSS

As I mentioned last night, as more of my friends join Posterous and use it as a hub to populate their I am becoming a huge fan of their built in reader. It's helping me discover all kinds of new, substantive content that is hard to find in Twitter or even multiple blog RSS feeds. Today I found out you can actually subscribe to the Posterous peeps you follow via RSS. Here's how.

First, visit posterous.com/reader in your browser. If you're using Firefox, Safari or IE, the RSS icon should light up. Then all you need to do is subscribe to that feed. I am wondering if this one day will become my preferred input channel - especially if Posterous becomes as real-time as Friendfeed, Facebook and Twitter. It still feels slow right now, like blogging. Then again, much of the content already finds its way into all three sites. So this might be moot. Still, for now, it's cool for me.
Filed under  Lifestreaming   Posterous   RSS   Streams  
8 Comments
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Posted 6 months ago

Lifestreaming: Evolving the Model from Import and Aggregate to Hub and Spokes

Lifestreaming started out initially as a model that revolved around importation and aggregation: a place to roll-up all your streams. But that's changing.

Now that Facebook acquired Friendfeed and the noise on Twitter is at near cacophonous levels, I am seeing a new model emerge for lifestreaming. This one centers on using a site as your hub, having it syndicate out to all your spokes (where you engage around it) and then bringing some of the conversation back to your site. It also seems to help people focus their content in more useful ways.

Mark Krynsky, who I had a chance to meet in LA last week at XPrize, summarizes this shift for lifestreaming nicely in this post. Here's how he diagrammed it...

And this closely mirrors what others, like our creative director Jared Hendler, Fast Company and others have observed about Posterous.

Facebook, Twitter and RSS all have a big problem - too much noise, not enough signal. This new approach for lifestreaming, however, coupled with Posterous' outstanding reader (depicted below) is forcing me to make smart choices about who I follow. I am finding myself turning more to the Posterous community for cool stuff since, they too, seem to recognize that too much nose is bad, signal is good.

Maybe I am crazy, but I think the simplicity of the Posterous platform - which helps us get closer to signals and away from noise - will be the next site to capture the hearts and minds of the digerati, particularly as they tire of the noise.

   
Click here to download:
Lifestreaming_Evolving_the_Mod.zip (883 KB)

Filed under  attention   lifestreaming   Posterous  
23 Comments
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Posted 6 months ago

Quote of the Day: Taking Your Tweets Back Home

"I'm done with the lock-down and down-times. My micro and macro personal blogs will all flow through here (Posterous) out to Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc and the intake valve is Google Reader and GMail."
via Sam Harrelson as posted on samharrelson.me

New platforms not only unleash my creativity and curiosity, but they help me find new voices. I started to follow Chris Brogan more closely after I saw his posts on Facebook. {osterous has brought me Sam Harrelson who is sharing tidbits like these for using this platform as a launch pad for everything else.

I haven't gone this far yet yet. However, given the probably pending demise of Friendfeed and how well Posterous works with the iPhone I am considering it for all but the RT's and the @s.

How about you - are you taking your Tweets back home?

Filed under  Lifestreaming   posterous   Quotes   Twitter  
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Posted 7 months ago

From Google Reader to Posterous with a Click

via blog.posterous.com

Posterous continuous its innovation march, letting you instantly send items to Google Reader with a single click. Don't count RSS readers out yet. I suspect Google Reader will soon add features that make it easier to read and reply to Tweets too.

Filed under  google   Google Reader   Lifestreaming   posterous   RSS  
7 Comments
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Posted 7 months ago

Posterous Gets All Geo on You

More new features from the Posterous team - Google Maps integration. Just paste a link and it embeds a map. I need to test this from the iPhone next since it also works with geo-tagged photos too.

Thinking about how this might be used more broadly beyond posting. What immediately comes to mind is search. Show me all Posterous community members who have uploaded from the following areas in X hours. Also hoping that as video gets more metadata, we'll see more hyper locally tagged embeds too.

The map below should show you where I am in Chicago. I found myself using Google Chrome on my netbook and then copied and pasted the link into the email. Nice feature!




Filed under  Lifestreaming   Location Based Services   Posterous  
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Posted 8 months ago

Video Interview: The Posterous Team on their Vision, Strategy and Growth

via youtube.com

In this video I talk to co-founders Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan about the vision, strategy and growth of Posterous (traffic is up 20-50% every month). We also discuss lifestreaming and some forthcoming news: an iPhone app and theming.

Filed under  interviews   Lifestreaming   posterous   video  
23 Comments
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Posted 8 months ago
Theme by Cory Watilo.
More great Posterous themes at themes.posterous.com.