Louis Gray, the only person I know that can "like" faster than his own shadow ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

I can comment quickly too. - Louis Gray

LOL :-) - Alexander van Elsas

I'm beginning to think Louis is a script. ;-) - Chris Baskind

Chris, LOL, I thought so too for a while, but he says pretty smart things for a script ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

If he is a script, he just spawned some child processes. - Phil G

@J.Phil: This must be humor week on FriendFeed... - Yuvi

+1 J.Phil - Hao Chen

Soooooo, anyone got anything interesting to say about the post itself, or should we keep making these Louis Gray jokes (Sorry Louis) ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

Alexander, you always write very thought-provoking posts. I will re-read it again in the morning and maybe I can pull together something halfway intelligent. - Phil G

+1 J.Phil - Atul Arora

Thx J.Phil and Atul Arora ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

@Alexander - going to re-read in the morning with coffee .. operating on 3hrs sleep is starting to catch up on me. - Steven Hodson

The whole concept of "lifestreaming" is not really accurate. I'm not streaming my life when I use aggregation services. All I'm doing is having them track my behavior on some sites that friends and peers may find interesting. Lifestreaming things like meals, bodily functions, and the mundane are completely not interesting. But the idea of "always on" doesn't mean "broadcast everything". I like being always on. It's not just being on, it's being connected and engaged. - Louis Gray

re: trend 1, prediction: "homepage" will be dead in 10 years. A big company like Google will control a semantically connected device that is always online (maybe attached to you) that you can communicate with. That will be the destination. - Hao Chen

@Steven, good night. Louis, I probably should have used a different term, but when you combine services like Twitter, Dopplr, Beacon (-like services), I'm thinking these streams are depicting more of our actions in life (hence life-stream). - Alexander van Elsas

Louis, what interests me in the "always on" thing isn't just the streaming part. It is also interesting to think what will happen if your kids grow up, and there comes a clash between "always on" and events happening in real life. i suspect that when more people are reaching a state of "always on" there will be more interferences with physical life. It would be interesting to see what happens then. My feeling is that people will disconnect on purpose, to make a clear distinction again between on and off. - Alexander van Elsas

Hao, sounds like something I wouldn't trust Google or anyone else with ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

Alexander, true about the need for a destination but then web sites have been fighting to be our home page ever since the birth of the browser. The ideals of a user-centric web are great but - in reality - how many people want the levels of data portability that the campaigns demand? We already have cross service IM but, as far as social networks go, many join a particular service as that's where their friends are and have little (or even no) need to climb the walls of those gardens. Perhaps behaviour will alter but until social media becomes more prevalent we will not have a true picture of peoples behaviour in this area. - Colin Walker from fftogo

And, with regards to your second trend - you already know where I stand on the need to disconnect from time to time ;) - Colin Walker from fftogo

Alex: Viewing all these Flickr photos is really keeping me motivated to travel more (not less)! Although now it's strange to take 1-3 hrs/day when traveling to blog/e-mail/FriendFeed/call-friends... - Mitchell Tsai

Colin, I'm thinking about a destination that is mine, that I can truly call " home" . I am not sure what it would look like exactly, but it would have to be a user-centric place. What I mean by that is that I dictate what that home looks like, but more importantly, I get to dictate the underlying business model. I might pay for it, or allow advertisement, or whatever. But it wouldn't be something that forces a business model upon me (like Facebook does). This topic would justify another post ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

Interesting thoughts... - Colin Walker from fftogo

Sachendra says in a response on the post " When the novelty wears off, we’ll see the similar types of human behaviors as we have now." I think he is right up to a point. I responded "@Sachendra, that’s a bit what I am thinking. But I do think human behavior is a bit affected by the new uses of technology. So it will be more ” balancing out”. Technology will and has been leaving it's trace on our lives. - Alexander van Elsas

Now if all this socialization will make us unplug and meet in person that would be best! ;-) - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Igor LOL. But honestly, I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing to be socializing on the web. Being able to connect overcoming place, time, and distance is great. But it's just a matter of finding the right balance really. As more people will start using social media I think the novelty of "always on" will wear down and people will find balance once more ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

I think you are right. Looking forward to bumping into you in Thamel Nepal or Varanasi. Just please do not Stalk me, I know Kung Fu! LMAO - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Given that no one service can do everything that we would want, the "home" you want could end up being just a personalized homepage like iGoogle or Netvibes. If you put the right widgets on your page it definitely could be your "home". The problem is finding the right combination of services that suit your needs. - Rob Diana

Rob , maybe, I'm not sure. the problem with the examples is that they aren't really mine are they. There are business models over there that don't fit my need. I was thinking more along the lines of a private space. It needs to be a place where I can save the important stuff, where I can grant people access to parts whenever I want. I envision it to be the web version of a real home. That should be mine, not Google's ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

So, maybe we are looking at our own hosted site but do we host it remotely (say with our ISP), our own webspace or even at home (such as Windows Home Server). One way or another someone is going to have to write the platform that we all tweak to our needs wherever it is hosted. - Colin Walker from fftogo

We should host it in Sweden so it is neutral. lol - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

@Alexander, I was not recommending iGoogle or Netvibes I was just using them as examples of today's personalized homepage. In the future, I am assuming that the personalized homepage will change, and most likely existing ones will change as well. I know some service has the concept of private/public pieces, I cannot remember which it was though. There is also the problem of push vs pull (again). - Rob Diana

Colin, it could be something running on your own computer (or in Sweden for that matter HA HA), but where it runs isn't nearly as important as who is in control. I need to be in control. That ensures a business model is used that fits my own needs. That could be a subscription or an advertisement based version or whatever. - Alexander van Elsas

Rob, I got that, sorry if that wasn't clear ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

Trend 1 - wouldn’t your home on the Web naturally be the place where your master data resides? Trend 2 - agree - Mark Dykeman

@Mark, thx for your response. Let me point out that I'm not so concerned if I'm right, it is merely a thought exercise to help me understand the present ;-) But in response to your question. Your data currently resides with Facebook (figuratively speaking), do you want them to provide you with a home, or would you like a more user-centric home? Wrt to the second trend. It is interesting to explore the disconnect thing. How would it work, or in other words, how would we find balance? - Alexander van Elsas

And here is excellent advice from Sarah Perez "I love social media, but I love the “real world” too. Real human interaction is not achieved behind a keyboard, so as great as social media is…and it is great…I feel strongly that people need to find balance in their life when it comes to this. Take time away from the computer. Go for a walk, ride your bike, swim in the ocean, play with your dog, read a book, play a game, fall in love, have coffee with a friend and just talk. These things are important too, and you don’t need to tweet them to make the worthwhile. - Alexander van Elsas

And that's what I'll do for tonight. If I have enough time the followup on this will appear tomorrow, else the day after (so much to say, so little time) ;-) - Alexander van Elsas