The news of FriendFeed being bought by Facebook does not change things for a large number of users who did not find it very useful. In my previous What FriendFeed Is Not post, I had discussed this section of disillusioned users of FriendFeed, who tried to use it as a place for centralizing their online presence. I suggested that these users were better off using Chi.mp or StoryTlr instead.
So how do these services compare? Both Chi.mp and StoryTlr:
- Aggregate your blog posts, photos, etc. from multiple services
- Provide a ‘Centralized Me’ home on the web
- Lifestream your activities around the web
- Provide an RSS Feed of your Lifestream
- Allow you to backup / export your imported data
- Support Disqus commenting
- Support adding Google Analytics for tracking site traffic
- Both are committed to open standards – you own your data
- Your sites are ad-free on both services
- Both allow you to automatically cross-post from other services to Twitter
Chi.mp offers the following unique features:
- Open ID (This is the #1 requested feature under consideration at StoryTlr)
- Free “.mp” domain
- Sophisticated Contact Management – imports your contacts from various networks, allows you to group, manage, export them
- ‘Personas’ – provides different view of your site/lifestream based on different groups of contacts
- Supports importing from 7 sources – Yahoo, Flickr, Hotmail, Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, and any RSS Feed.
- Minimal, basic mini-blogging support
In contrast, StoryTlr has the following, which Chi.mp doesn’t:
- Lot of flexibility in page design and layout
- Has a few useful built-in widgets, you can create your own custom widget
- You can easily add ‘Pages’ to your site
- Mashup your data into ‘Stories’
- Exactly the same view of your site for everyone (unlike Chi.mp)
- Complete control over CSS layouts of your site
- Full blogging support includes all HTML including embed, script, etc.
- Offers lifestream and story widgets you can use on your own blog
- Browser bookmarklet to share anything directly on your StoryTlr site
- Supports importing from 16 sources – Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader, Identi.ca, Last.fm, Picasa, Qik, Seesmic, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Vimeo, YouTube, and any RSS Feed.
These are from my own observations, so do correct me if I’m wrong. I hope this comparison helps you decide which service is better suited to your needs.
I would love to know which one you prefer!
Posted via from SkepticGeek’s Posterous
