One of the big things I’ve been talking about, and working on over the past couple of months (although I haven’t been working much on it), is our new Lifestream service. The goal is to simply create an open platform. A place where a user can sign up and add their feeds much like on FriendFeed, or one of those hundred clones. However, we have a slightly different vision from the limited scope that is FriendFeed.

We want to create a platform where this data is open to the user. A platform where they can use this data whenever, wherever, and however they want. Breaking down barriers between the data providers, and the user is not our only goal, but we also want to bring you a platform which goes above and beyond what the others offer. Allowing you to group and tweak your feeds (which are being relabled as sources) to your hearts desire.

Let’s take an example. In the current Lifestream plugin, you have a “Digg” extension. This is a chunk of actual code, which lets you say “I want to show my Digg submissions, Digg favorites, and other Diggness, and group them all together.”. This by itself is fairly powerful, and gives the user some choice.

There is no more code which powers Digg, instead we have a simply “Feed” extension which can power any RSS/Atom based feed. Instead, Digg exists as a virtual extension, which requires very little configuration, and can be used, and reused, by any user, as well as created very easily without much of a learning curve.

Even more so, we have completely scrapped our previous grouping concept. Instead of restricting groups to simply being media types from the same source, we now allow you to group ANY source together as long as it’s the same media type (images can’t be grouped with messages). This opens up some very cool possibilities like being able to group all of your trendy news sites together (Digg, Reddit), or group all your bookmark posts together (Delicious, Google).

Beyond just the technical details, we’re launching this as a service oriented platform. What this means is that you have a one-stop-shop to do whatever you want with your Lifestream, and then you can reuse that data on a variety of sources. Our initial release will include not only a WordPress plugin, but extensions for vBulletin, Blogger, and MediaWiki as well (pending time).

Not only are we launching with several extensions, but we will also provide a very simple, themeable homepage for the user much like Pownce or Tumblr. This will allow you to post directly to your Lifestream, but also give you the ability to pull in information like your tweets. Essentially, this opens up an entire new blogging approach which hasn’t been very well explored.

To the point. The service will be slowly opening up to users over the next month, and we hope to launch a fully open beta within the next 3-6 months. If you’re an extreme Lifestream fan, and you think you can really contribute in terms of feedback, and quality testing, we’re looking for you. Simply send me an email letting me know that you are interested.