LifeInLines describes itself as a life-streaming service. It is a website where people can aggregate their live’s little moments, thoughts and experiences as it happens. Users can post notes/snippets on the website via typical means – email, SM, MMS, IM etc (off course, they can post directly on the website as well). They can also make a phone call and post a voice message directly as an audio file (this is a cool feature, btw!). Each post can be kept private, or shared with people across different privacy modes.
Check out some examples: here, here & here.
LifeInLines’s founders are a couple of recent IIMC grads who chose this over regular campus placements. They think their website serves as a chronicle of your life, besides being a simple yet powerful way of staying in intimate touch with people you care for.
LifeInLines belongs to the genre of what I would call the “Slice of Life” Web 2.0 apps (borrowed from “Slice of life” television advertisements – think Hamara Bajaj, Airtel’s feel good ads- these typically have very high recall rates). The best example of this is probably Twitter. And it is difficult to argue either FOR or AGAINST these apps – on the face of it, you start wondering what their core value proposition is, but as Twitter has shown, real utility is often buried deep down, only to be discovered once the initial skepticism gets blunted. I can admit that (like lots of other people) my views on twitter have undergone a dramatic change. What seemed initially to be a frivolous, fleeting, self obsessive use case, is actually a BRILLIANTLY useful web application. And so like Twitter, LifeInlines (or other applications in this class) have a hard initial job at hand – they have to educate users how or why they make sense.
One feedback – with internet users already fixated on the generic social networking sites (Orkut Facebook), it might make sense for LifeInLines to go the widget way. This would make it easy for their content to be syndicated across the web. In the fast moving, ever changing internet landscape, life as a standalone entity is not impossible, but may have non-trivial starting inertia. Piggybacking on existing high traffic destinations may a good tactic.
All the best to the team!
