Aggregation for the Mainstream?

Mashasble has published an article today asking the question -

Will Aggregation Ever go Mainstream?

It's a valid question. In considering the issue, they reference recent posts from Louis Gray and Corvida, but the main point made and the potential death knell for these services is:

I think it isn’t that these sites aren’t cool and fun. I think that it’s just for folks who aren’t news junkies or folks who don’t make their hobbies and livings being up to date on the news have other things to be doing.

In an earlier post considering lifestreaming services in general, I wondered aloud (well, in blog-print) who has time for all this hyper-connectivity and in the end opted out of my FriendFeed account.  The reality is that the early adopters who have put the weight behind the initial splash of these services is a finite set. Eventually, growth will slow and the public at large will be looking for something more. My guess is that the common internet user doesn't have hundreds of RSS feeds and thousands of social media friends. For those folks these services simply aren't useful.

While the problem of Information Fragmentation is a real one, for most of the population it's manageable. I think of my wife as the perfect example. She has one email account, one social media account (facebook), reads the NYTimes online, mostly ignores her Twitter account, and has no idea what RSS means. Sure, she's got a few places to visit in order to collect her daily dose of digital information, but something like FriendFeed would be an unneeded layer of abstraction.

The articles referenced above cite the need for added functionality to allow a service like FriendFeed to be viable for the masses. You can break down these potential functional additions into two categories:

Added Functionality Generates Service Specific Data
If a service like FriendFeed generates additional data specific to the use of the service, then the service itself simply adds to the problem. That is, it ceases to be just an aggregation point and so as competing services evolve it becomes likely that either users will need to join multiple aggregation services or the aggregation services will need to inter-operate. Both of these scenarios seem pointless and I'm fairly certain there's an endless loop involved in inter-operable aggregation services.

Added Functionality Does Not Generate Service Specific Data
If these services do nothing but allow you to interact with your social media data from afar, then they're resigned to be the bastard step child of the sites for which they aggregate. For the average user, there's no reason to participate in FriendFeed when it's just as easy and more straightforward to participate in Facebook.

So the jury that is me remains undecided on the fate of these services. For an incredibly small segment of the population they present a solution to a daily problem, but to the internet user at large they're not very compelling. I'll report back when my wife activates a FriendFeed account.

Related Posts: LIfestreaming