Activity Streams
Chris Messina
Internal meeting
January 29, 2009 ☕ Facebook, Palo Alto, CA

“Lifestreaming”

Today
Last.fm
•
Jaiku
•
Facebook newsfeed
•
FriendFeed
•
etc.
•

The challenge
Develop a format for expressing activities
•
Compelling experiences from activity feeds
•
The zero-knowledge test
•
etc.
•

FriendFeed Services

The Benefits
Staying in touch across the web
•
An open, emergent ecosystem of activities
•
Filtering, search, automation & stats
•
Optimal, compelling, custom experiences
•
Coalescing, merging, de-duping
•
etc.
•

Examples

last.fm

sweetcron (yongfook.com)

Facebook

FriendFeed

boxee.tv

Movable Type Motion

Eventbox

Anatomy of an activity

Actor verb object [context]

factoryjoe tweeted Niches Bitches! [via SMS]

Actor verb object {indirect object} [context]

Chris bought Planet Earth {for Brynn} [at Amazon.com]

Activities on the Social Web

I visit davidrecordon.com

I decide I want to follow his activities
Sign in to follow Dave!

I sign in with my OpenID

Before I’m sent back, I’m asked
whether I want to follow Dave

I say yes, and am asked which
activity types I’m interested in...
Add contact
Dave Recordon Add subscriptions
Worst username evar. Contact details
San Francisco, CA Status updates
davidrecordon.com
Photos
Bookmarks
Your message (optional)
Blogs
Hi there! We met that conference
daveman692
last week. I’ve subscribed to your
updates on my site. Six Apart
Location
-Chris
Music
Movies
Slide presentations
Events
Travel
Local reviews
Books
Access requires permission from Dave
Inspired by Jyri Engeström

Should any of the selected types be protected,
I will be asked whether I want to request access
Dave’s contact details, photos and location are protected.
Would you like to request access to these items?
Please note that Dave may deny your request.
No thanks OK

If I say OK, an OAuth request will be sent which
Dave will later be able to approve, deny or ignore

...And Dave’s public activities will
show up in my activities dashboard.

...And if Dave later approves my request,
his protected activities will show up too

Activities on the Open Web

I visit stammer.com

I decide I want to join this community
Sign in to start posting!

I sign in with my OpenID

Before I’m sent back, I’m asked whether I want
to authorize Stammer to postback my activities
Stammer can post the activities you take on their site to
your profile.
Would you like to allow this?
If you’re not sure, you can decide later. These activities will not be made public
unless you want them to be. You can always revoke this permission later.
Decide later OK

If I say yes, I am returned to Stammer,
authenticated. As I use the site, my actions
are posted to my activity stream

If I defer, I am returned to Stammer,
authenticated. As I use the site, my actions
are posted to my activity dashboard, where
I can choose to share my activities later

Sound familiar?

Sound familiar?

Current work

ATOM Extension

<entry>
<id>tag:photopanic.example.com,2008:activity01</id>
<title>Geraldine posted a Photo on PhotoPanic</title>
<published>2008-11-02T15:29:00Z</published>
<link rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/html\"
href=\"/geraldine/activities/1\" />
<activity:verb>
http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/post
</activity:verb>
<activity:object>
<id>tag:photopanic.example.com,2008:photo01</id>
<title>My Cat</title>
<published>2008-11-02T15:29:00Z</published>
<link rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/html\"
href=\"/geraldine/photos/1\" />
<activity:object-type>
tag:atomactivity.example.com,2008:photo
</activity:object-type>
<source>
<title>Geraldine's Photos</title>
<link rel=\"self\" type=\"application/atom+xml\"
href=\"/geraldine/photofeed.xml\" />
<link rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/html\"
href=\"/geraldine/\" />
</source>
</activity:object>
<content type=\"html\">
&lt;p&gt;Geraldine posted a Photo on PhotoPanic&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;img src=\"/geraldine/photo1.jpg\"&gt;
</content>
</entry>

<entry>
<id>tag:photopanic.example.com,2008:activity01</id>
<title>Geraldine posted a Photo on PhotoPanic</title>
<published>2008-11-02T15:29:00Z</published>
<link rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/html\"
href=\"/geraldine/activities/1\" />
<activity:verb>
http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/post
</activity:verb>
<activity:object>
<id>tag:photopanic.example.com,2008:photo01</id>
<title>My Cat</title>
<published>2008-11-02T15:29:00Z</published>
<link rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/html\"
href=\"/geraldine/photos/1\" />
<activity:object-type>
tag:atomactivity.example.com,2008:photo
</activity:object-type>
<source>
<title>Geraldine's Photos</title>
<link rel=\"self\" type=\"application/atom+xml\"
href=\"/geraldine/photofeed.xml\" />
<link rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/html\"
href=\"/geraldine/\" />
</source>
</activity:object>
<content type=\"html\">
&lt;p&gt;Geraldine posted a Photo on PhotoPanic&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;img src=\"/geraldine/photo1.jpg\"&gt;
</content>
</entry>

Starter verbs/objects

Weblog Entry
Note
Photo
Video
Bookmark
...

What can we observe?

The Benefits
Staying in touch across the web
•
An open, emergent ecosystem of activities
•
Filtering, search, automation & stats
•
Optimal, compelling, custom experiences
•
Coalescing, merging, de-duping
•
etc.
•

More soon at activitystrea.ms

Fin.
me -› factoryjoe.com

Fin.
me -› factoryjoe.com