There have been several startups in the space of Digital Lifestyle Aggregation (DLA) which have come up globally in the past 18 months. DLAs let users create and organize memorable digital assets (using emails, photos, videos, documents, SMS, blogs, social apps, etc.) and help them share these with family and friends. Users use it to build personal diaries, family tree histories (genealogy) for social casting, etc.
I think it is an interesting space especially for ‘Gen Y’ whose life revolves around the online world and I believe it will continue to grown in the long term. Globally, the early adopters have been the Internet savvy ‘digerati’ who want to preserve their digital memories for the future. Companies are busy acquiring users for the long term, which works well since these users put in so much time to build content that they are unlikely to ever leave — instead, they are the ones encouraging friends and family to join!
While I like the concept of ‘lifestreaming’ I wonder whether this may be somewhat early for the Indian Internet consumer. The one thing I do worry about is the competition — more than ten websites have emerged globally. I would also be watching future entrants like Google which have enough content (through properties such as OpenSocial, Youtube, Picasa, Android, Google Maps, Blogger, etc.) to make lifestreaming a very seamless experience for the mass market.
Specific to LifeinLines and Lifeblob: Both companies have good websites and feature sets. I really liked LifeinLine’s focus on SMS/MMS and Lifeblob’s fantastic UI. I would encourage the companies to continue this consumer focus and to experiment further to make their proposition more simple, relevant and mainstream for the Indian consumer. I can see that both teams are truly passionate (by reading their lifestreams) and I wish them the very best in their entrepreneurial endeavours.
About the columnist: Niren Shah is managing director at Norwest Venture Partners. He was part of the original management team at auction site Baazee which was acquired by eBay. He also served as senior director of strategy and ventures at eBay in the US prior to Norwest. This column was written in response to a review sought on LifeinLines.
Photo Courtesy: Norwest Venture Partners
Thanks for your encouraging words to Team LiL Naren,
We’re likely to see really interesting times ahead and we’re all geared up!
The arena is not just India, but the world! And yes, further simplification of content creation beyond what we’re enabling right now, is going to be our focus area.
Thanks again,
Ankur
Team LiL