Streamy, which we wrote about last week, is sending out early beta invitations and I had a chance to be one of the first people to poke around on the site. The video we included in that post still shows a very current user interface, and the feel of the product is very close to what is shown there. Or click on the image to the right for a very large screen shot of the home page.
Streamy takes features from many new web startups, but it is not a competitor to Digg. No voting to drive stories to the top, for example. It’s a personalized news service and social network. Digg isn’t personalized. It’s news for the masses based on popular opinion.
At its core, this is a social network, where adding friends is the first order of business. Once you have friends, you can share news items with them, and get recommendations from them via email or a built in, Meebo-like instant messaging service.
You also need to build out your profile. Do this by adding a picture and personal information, joining groups, adding feed subscriptions, etc. A screen shot of co-founder Donald Mosites’ profile is here.
Streamy, The News Recommender
But Streamy is all about the news, and the social network is there to spread the good stuff. Like many who’ve tried and failed (see the discussion under “Mgnet” on this post), Streamy is offering a personalized news service. News items shown to you on the home page are based on it’s idea of what you will like. It takes into account the types of news feeds you subscribe to, what you are commenting on, and what your friends are reading.
Above the recommendations, though, are the top stories. This is the only place where Streamy will compete with Digg, in pushing popular stuff to the masses. The stories are image-driven (see top of first screen shot above). AOL also went this way with their new Mgnet product after a lot of user testing – people like pictures, apparently.
Each news item can be commented (very similar to what Newsvine is doing), emailed, or dragged into an IM conversation. Users can also set up topic-based filters to drill down to stuff they really want to see.
Is It Viral?
I’m sticking to my initial opinion of Streamy (”It is well designed, has lots of intelligent features, and is almost sure to drop into obscurity immediately after launch.”). It’s pretty and extremely well thought-out, but it’s not clear that it does anything new enough to grab people’s attention.
There is, however, one feature that’s pure brilliance…the built in instant messaging feature already integrates with AIM, so you can see your AIM buddies on Streamy and send them stuff from the site. In the next few days they say they’ll be adding support for Live Messenger, Yahoo and GTalk as well, which gives it most of the functionality of Meebo. Users will have the ability to quickly spread news items to their friends right on the site, and this is a very viral feature.
I do have one complaint – the site makes a lot of noises, similar to I’mInLikeWithYou, and there is no obvious way to turn it off without muting the speakers. Not good for use at work.
Streamy is based in Hermosa Beach, CA (Los Angeles). They raised $100,000 in May 2007 from Driftwood Investments.
Streamy, hmm….
We need a Digg alternative…..but this isnt gonna do that either, right?
Is there an invite?
no invites yet, and accounts don’t have any invites with them so inviteshare doesn’t work.
Yey, I was the first one to comment……..
Strange, I usually get 5th or so.
Noises arent that bad……for home users. besides, office use is not recommended.
digg is quite influential, and that sucks. many of my friends are banned for no real reason like spamming.
wow, you replied before i reload!
i read in crunchnotes, you said you reply quickly, but didnt believe it would be so quick.
Thanks, love you!
No invites, but you can request for an invitation from them? I just did that
Looks and sounds nice from the report there. Agree with TechZilo, it would be nice to have a real Digg competitor, but I kind of think that anything with that mentality of a crowd is going to end up the same. I do believe in the ‘wisdom of crowds’, but in a different sense than a mob. It involves many people, making rational decisions in their own best interest. Not just a group of people with nothing to gain or lose choosing things.
But from the video screencast that they done, it seems like it is more like meebo + google reader + scribefire to me.
I’m not so sure they will drop into obscurity, if Streamy gets just a few ‘big players’ using them who blog about using streamy and end up mentioning Streamy off-hand then I can see everyone wanting to join.
One interesting thing about Streamy is that it will not link directly to the content itself as Digg does, Streamy is a centralized content aggregation and filtration site, not a social bookmarking website like Digg. These two are clearly different and not in the same platform. A Digg killer, as it has been quoted, is yet to come.
Socialitico! is a centralized content aggregation and filtration (voting) news social bookmarking and networking website similar to Digg. It’s in its development phase and is based on the message system of Meebo with the interface of Facebook and the functions of Digg and very similar features than those of Streamy, built with a combination of Flash and Ajax technologies.
Wow! It seems great. I’m waiting for an invitation from them.
Shankar,
Same here. I’ve already requested my invitation. Hopefully, it’ll arrive in less than a week.
gettit and EJRaven, there are viable Digg alternatives. Reddit immediately comes to mind, then there’s Netscape for political news, MarkTD for marketing news and a host of other niche social news type sites depending on what you’re into.
Very disappointed to know that Streamy is not a Digg alternative
I agree with this sentiment:
“It is well designed, has lots of intelligent features, and is almost sure to drop into obscurity immediately after launch.”
Digg alternative? Myself and 100,000 other people have been saying that this should be a fairly easy task for Google to pull off.
Given all the stats from search and click, to Google Reader starring and sharing, they have a goldmine of analytics by which to feed the masses.
They do some of this with the trends product (http://google.com/trends) but certainly not down to the story level or refreshed timely enough for a swarm app to be fun to play with.
…and as I write this, Scoble just blogged on a new FaceBook Google Reader app which basically takes Reader stats of Facebook users and does some analytical rollups..
“It shows you top items for the past 12 hours, or 24 hours, or 48 hours, or the past week. And it shows how many times each item was shared.”
http://scobleiz...facebook-yummy/
This is cool. I am waiting for their invitation.
I think,we need a site like streamy. And i hope it is great for us.
The design looks great. I’m a little shaky as far as how well it will work compared to digg, but who knows?
-Chris
http://www.nerdcouncil.com
So… whats the innovation?
innovation, innovation, where are you?
Interesting… We had recently released an application for facebook called Vibes which is like a personalized Digg. It is tightly integrated into Facebook and provides a personalized experience by showing the stories submitted by your facebook friends in the main page (picks up the data from facebook). And it has voting too.. Here are the links if you are interested.
http://apps.fac...ok.com/fbvibes/
http://www.face...a0f146b198e2d0c
Waiting on the invite to come for http://www.asktheadmin.com when we get it we will come back and report. Has anyone looked at http://www.spotback.com? we like it alot and just integrated it with our website check it out.
Noises? Seriously?
I can think of several communities where this would be EXTREMELY valuable. Busting for an invite.
The Founder’s Profile is SUUUUPPPEEEER GAY
Streamy looks quite interesting for news – I asked for an invite and am hoping to get it. I am based in Europe and am wondering whether they cover global news or just US news.
Sounds like Streamy is more in the Newsvine space than Digg, with a stronger SN component – it could be interesting for news junkies.
The broader question for me is the YASN issue: what does it take not only for somebody to join, but for it to be worth inviting their friends as well?
Oh no, another site where I have to register and then type in the same stuff over and over about myself. For goodness sake
1. Standardise a format for this sort of stuff
2. Allow me to host it somewhere on my site. e.g. my blog
3. Then have a registration process that allows them to pick up said feed if they want.
In the age of the internet, we shouldn’t have to keep typing in the same stuff over and over and over and over and over and over and over and ….
While I’m at it, said feed could also list all my items for sale, and then be a free competitor to eBay. I don’t pay Google to list my web pages, why should I pay eBay to list an item (especially one that doesn’t sell)
Mike, thanks again for checking out the site.
There is an option to mute, it’s just not as obvious as it should be. Accessible mute buttons – consider it done.
Really, you don’t have to give any “profile information” to make your profile interesting to your friends – what you save, subscribe to, create and share builds it out for you. Your subscriptions to RSS feeds are portable given our OPML import, and your chat networks are portable given our IM support. We understand switching costs in 2007, and are doing our best to ease them.
Regarding the comparison to Digg, I don’t think it’s valid. Stories on the site are from RSS feeds, not user submissions. Also, as Mike said, stories aren’t promoted to the top level based on user votes. Stories are promoted to you, based on a combination of what we think you’ll like and what the community likes.
Dang….I was really looking forward to this being a digg replacement. I am so tired of digg and its 20 select posters who always have stupid articles on the front page. I thought this was going to be the one to overtake digg, ugh
Wow all these Digg competitors!!! It’s getting a little out of hand
. I have to say though I am liking the look of this platform, it has big potential!!
I built “clickabes” (http://venkks.googlepages.com/) last year and is Google Gadget which allows people to share interesting stories with friends. Looks like Streamy has similar functionality.
Please see under website (Online Photo Gallery)
Daily Update | Top Picture
http://www.wallscity.com
Must agree, the site idea seems too much like too many others out there. It is going to take some combination of personalized news with mass-social voting to oust Digg or even become a competitor.
Socialitico! everyone, Socialitico!
Remember the name.
@Michael #1: “I’m sticking to my initial opinion of Streamy (”It is well designed, has lots of intelligent features, and is almost sure to drop into obscurity immediately after launch.”).”
Although you can’t vote, you won’t have to, since a story gets pushed to “most popular” by the sheer number of people bookmarking it. I could be wrong, but I’ll assume that means ANYTHING can be pushed to Top News: doesn’t matter who “submitted” it, doesn’t matter who your “friends” are, doesn’t matter how long they’ve used the site.
If that also means *no editorial control*, no *algorithms,” etc, I’m all for it…something truly democratic and user-driven, so perhaps a good alternative to Digg. It includes commenting and so many ways to gather, sort, view, and store information, not to mention connect with friends, it’s mind-boggling. I can’t wait to try it…
@ Michael again: “no invites yet, and accounts don’t have any invites with them so inviteshare doesn’t work.
Invites are being issued. I emailed for one two days ago and got a reply saying I’d hear back from them soon.
@ Craig 24; “Oh no, another site where I have to register and then type in the same stuff over and over about myself. For goodness sake…”
There’s always RoboForm.
@1: We already have an alternative to Digg.. it’s called Reddit
This looks more comparable with Newsvine than anything else.
http://www.hwswworld.com/wp
reddit is better ;
– and This looks like middle meat ..
– has a lot of middle features. nothing dominant or new
Looks like a great integration of my rss reader, digg and meebo. I look forward to getting an invite.
Come on, Arrington… Give em up!
This website is probably one of the most anticipated sites of the year. But I think its going to be a bust.
First of all, why even bother with this site? Seriously, whats the point of using a freaking web browser and AIM anymore? This site has to much. What I am trying to save is, the developers of this site thought Streamy would be a big hit because it has a boatload of features… USELESS FEATURES!
Honestly, I would rather use my regular AIM for IMing, get RSS feeds sent directly to my desktop, and get the news from multiple websites like I do now. There is no reason in having an all in one site like this, its not really a good concept. It’s just a bunch of junk put together in my opinion. I will check out this site when it launches, but I will not join and I am not a fan of Digg either.