Activity stream explained

An activity stream is a list of recent activities performed by an individual, typically on a single website. For example, Facebook's News Feed is an activity stream. Since the introduction of the News Feed on September 6, 2006,^[1] other major websites have introduced similar implementations for their own users. Since the proliferation of activity streams on websites, there have been calls to standardize the format so that websites could interact with a stream provided by another website. The Activity Streams project, for example, is an effort to develop an activity stream protocol to syndicate activities across social web applications.^[2] Several major websites with activity stream implementations have already opened up their activity streams to developers to use, including Facebook and MySpace.^[3]

Though activity stream arises from social networking, nowadays it has become an essential part^[4] of business software. Enterprise social software is used in different types of companies to organize their internal communication and acts as an addition to traditional corporate intranet. Collaboration software like Jive Software, Yammer, and Chatter offer activity stream as a separate product. At the same time other software providers such as, Central Desktop, and Wrike offer activity stream as an integrated part of their collaboration software solution.^{[5] [6]}

Activity streams come in two different variations:

• Generic feeds: all users see the same content in the activity stream.
• Personalised feeds: each user gets bespoke items as well as custom ranking of each element in the feed.

Notable sites with activity streams

• Facebook's News Feed^[7]
• Gnip
• Salesforce.com's Chatter^[8]
• Traction TeamPage Release 5.0 adds activity streams to Enterprise 2.0 social software platform^[9]
• Twitter
• Tumblr
• Snapchat
• Spotify
• Pinterest

Notable software

• Eureka Streams
• Ektron CMS400.NET Release 8.0 adds activity streams to its social software suite^[10]

See also

• Distributed social network
• OpenSocial
• Social networking service

External links

• Mirror Worlds Talk by David Gelernter on Compass Summit 2011

• Instagram's feed with images & videos
• New York Times news feed (on mobile)

Notes and References

1. Web site: Facebook Users Revolt, Facebook Replies. September 6, 2006. TechCrunch. July 11, 2010. Michael Arrington .
2. Web site: Atom Activity Base Schema (Draft). Activity Streams. July 11, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100314192510/http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/activity-schema-01.html#share. March 14, 2010. dead.
3. Web site: MySpace Opens Activity Stream to External Developers. PC World. July 11, 2010. Juan Carlos Perez. December 9, 2009.
4. Web site: The Modern User Experience for the Enterprise and the Web. January 2011. Oracle.com. 2012-06-25.
5. Web site: Forrester research. www.tibco.com.
6. Web site: Yammer, Chatter, Tibbr Ranked Top Social Activity Streams. David F Carr. Information Weekdate=May 18, 2012.
7. Web site: Facebook opens up 'activity stream' to external developers. Computer World. July 11, 2010. Juan Carlos Perez. April 27, 2009.
8. Web site: Salesforce.com Heralds The Activity Stream - Chatter Comes out of Beta. ReadWriteWeb. June 22, 2010. July 11, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100626014818/http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/06/salesforcecom-has-facebook-in.php. 2010-06-26. dead.
9. Web site: Traction TeamPage 5.0 Delivers Integrated Social Networking and Collaboration with New Generation Interface Technology. Company press release. June 15, 2010.
10. Web site: Release delivers eMarketing Suite and builds on CMS400.NET's social software platform. Company press release. November 9, 2009.