It is another Tuesday, and another review of an application. This time it will be Streamy. This application is making noise on the net and for good reason too; can it really be that amazing? I'll figure it out right here in my preview of Streamy for Web Tech Tuesday.

What Streamy Is

Streamy takes everything about web 2.0 and brings solid social features to a news reader. When I first saw Streamy, the comparison I made while in a chat room was "Google Reader + MySpace + Jaiku + Meebo combined together." I believe that is an accurate description of the application in my mind.

There have been some amazing applications that have accomplished parts of what Streamy is attempting, but never has one single application pulled all the various things and had it work so well together. If there is going to be an application that does this, Streamy appears to be it.

What Streamy Is Not

The developers of Streamy have recently released a blog post stating that they do not intend on killing Digg. That statement is true as many websites have oddly made the comparison of Streamy to Digg. As Streamy's blog entry states, the application has very little in common with the core functionality of Digg:

"Killing Digg is not our goal. Our goal is to bring you personally relevant news in an engaging, collaborative environment. That is not by any means mutually exclusive to a voting model."

Although, the Streamy developers did say:

"With that in mind, we do intend to kill the dry, boring RSS reader. I’m talking about the inbox-style RSS reader that is not intriguing, not social, and makes little or no attempt at personal relevance. We have created a system that aggregates syndicated content, channels it through your new and existing social networks, and creates a sum that is greater than its parts. Otherwise, as an aggregator, we do not replace tools - we mesh them into a new experience."

The Review

Streamy boasts a beautiful interface. It is quite possibly the most intuitive interface to come from a web 2.0 application; Streamy also makes great use of Ajax technology. Things like using your mouse and hotkeys for navigating content on the site is welcomed. You can drag and drop items to move them, and share them with friends easily. Beyond a few bugs that are to be expected in a beta product, the interface performs beautifully, and it will be interesting to see more themes for the Streamy. (I'm using the dark theme, but there is also the default blue theme.)

Streamy's main purpose is an RSS/News reader. There are many ways to add feeds. You can enter in an RSS feeds manually. You can also import an OPML file, browse by topic, and search through the top 100 tags to discover new feeds.

After adding your RSS feeds, you can then go to your "Subscriptions" page on Streamy (shown on the screenshot below) and then navigate through your feeds like a normal feed reader. You can use the 'f' and 'd' key to go to the next and previous item respectively. Navigating your various feeds is accomplished by using the Subscriptions box on the middle column. If you have ever used a feed reader before, then all this will come naturally.

Clicking on an article will bring up the article itself displayed right within Streamy. Here you can save, share, and navigate through the news. Hotkeys can be used to accomplish many of the tasks. You may also click on the title of the article to bring up a circular navigation menu (shown below) that will appear, and you can drag and drop the story on an icon to do various things like sharing a story, emailing a story, and more. There are multiple ways to accomplish the same action within Streamy, and most people will appreciate this.

You also have the ability to keep tabs on what your friends have been doing. Clicking on the "Down Stream" tab gives you information on what stories your friends have saved, commented on, and more. Filters are available to view only the relevant information you wish to see about your friends. It is also possible to link profiles from Jaiku, YouTube, Last.fm, and other services to your account.

The "Profile" and "Start" pages display information related to your account and content that is suggested to you. I question how Streamy decides which content is shown to you, but it seems to be doing an okay job as I have found several new feeds to subscribe to that I enjoy this way.

Getting into the more interactive features of Streamy, you can make comments on articles and view other members who have posted comments. You can also jump right into a chat room, which reminds me of Meebo in many ways, and there are usually people in the "Streamy Beta Testers" group chat where I have been spending most of my time.

Groups can be both created and joined. You can join a group related to car enthusiasts, and then share articles related to cars which fellow members would likely appreciate. Then you can hop in the group chat room and discuss why domestics are better than imports. There is also forum-like functionality built in as well for the group profiles.

All these features really bring Streamy together as a social community. If they added in video chat, I would be amazed beyond belief. Streamy really is focused on the social aspect of the experience, and it pulls it off. This is the kind of site you could immerse yourself in, and have open on your browser for hours at a time.

Considering that Streamy is still in beta, and has impressed me so much, I must say that this sure looks like a winner in the making. The hype surrounding Streamy is well deserved. Although the site claims to not be in competition with Digg, I really can see myself spending more time on Streamy than Digg now after experiencing both.

Streamy definitely has potential to be the greatest web 2.0 project created. It is still far too early to say that it is though. Many new web services popping up today do not have great business plans to generate money. It is going to be interesting to see how Streamy intends on making a profit from their creation. If they do accomplish that, then this will surely be a success story. You will certainly be hearing more about Streamy as time goes on.

So You Want To Beta Test Streamy?

I have two Streamy invites, but I am keeping the one for a friend. So if you are interested in trying out Streamy before anyone else, write a comment and explain why. If you seem interested enough, I'll send you my last invite.

I will attempt to see if I can obtain more Streamy invites to give away to Tech In Demand readers.

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