Review of LifeIO

With the increasing amount of connectivity services scattered over the web in different forms there is no longer a question of if we will start to use aggregators to bring together these services. I personally have 12 email accounts for various companies and roles, 3 twitter accounts, 4 IM accounts (ICQ/AIM, GTalk, MSN and Skype) and 2 social networking accounts (Facebook and LinkedIn). Hence I’d love to have a place where I could aggregate all of them. The only question now is about who will provide the mainstream solution.

LifeIO is one of the new kids on the block in the increasingly crowded space of email/social networks/news feed aggregators. The first wave hit back in 2006 when both Fuser and Orgoo stole a lot of attention in online media. However, none of them really seem to have taken off. This year at TechCrunch 50 there were (at least) two new competitors present: LifeIO and threadsy.

The first time I heard about LifeIO was a while back when it was featured on TechCrunch. After reading the article, I signed up for the beta program and last week I received the invite. My experience as an exclusive private beta tester didn’t last for long as this week LifeIO opened up their public beta program.

So what is LifeIO? The idea with LifeIO is that instead of running all over the web to access your personal data, you’ll simply use LifeIO. With new communication tools being released all the time and the fact that we spend more and more time communicating online it sounds like a winning concept. One messaging platform, one address book and one calendar. Simple as pie.

I’ve already mentioned that LifeIO is an aggregator, so what does it aggregate? LifeIO currently supports:

• Email (IMAP/POP3, AOL, Gmail and Yahoo)
• Chat (GTalk and MSN Messenger)
• News (RSS)
• Social networks (Facebook and Twitter)
• Shopping (Yahoo Shopping, Amazon, iTunes Store, Craigslist and Fandango)

In addition, LifeIO also features a calendar, address book, todo list and scratch pad. With all those features, LifeIO is really aspiring to become your one-stop personal communication portal.

While the idea of aggregating data is great, one thing that strikes me after using LifeIO is: can you aggregate too much data? I feel like there is too much data thrown at me. In order to tame all the data, some kind of filtering option to help prioritize would help. For instance, an email from a client is more important than the latest Slashdot post. The same is true for Twitter feeds. A ‘mentioning’ is more important than a random tweet from a friend. Of course, a good priority system may inevitably turn into a power-user feature and scare away the average user. This is a very difficult problem, but this is something that LifeIO really needs to figure out.

Another thing that I think is crucial is support for syncing. Today many of us access our data from our mobile devices and there are good systems in place for this. In order to become the next big personal communication portal, LifeIO can’t take a step back in that area. A syncing protocol (eg. SyncML) is needed for their contacts and calendar systems. If they could also aggregate all of your email accounts and then push them them as one account to your mobile device LifeIO would have a chance to become the ultimate communications portal.

The idea of a Dashboard is great, but in its current form, the dashboard in LifeIO is not very useful, as it does not give you a very good overview of your data.

Pros

• The concept of having everything in one place.
• LifeIO uses SSL by default.
• The news-feed (MyStream). By default it is set to update every 3 second. This is far too frequently. While I like to get my updates of mail, tweets in almost real time, if you add RSS feeds to the mix, this is just information overflow.
• Shopping is an interesting addition that stands out.

Cons

• There is no ‘natural’ integration for chat in the design. Perhaps a they should make room for an IM section in the sidebar.
• The dashboard does not do a very good job on displaying an overview. Instead, I’d rather see something more Google Reader-inspired which would be more user friendly.
• The interface is not intuitive and user friendly enough for primetime.
• When hovering the mouse over an item, an AJAX preview-window pops up. Unfortunately this window is way too large and the way it renders the content makes it more annoying than useful.
• The email functionalities can be compared to Hotmail back in 1995. Again, I know it’s still in Alpha mode, so it might not be fair to criticize this too much.

The bottom line

The idea is great and kudos to the LifeIO team for making a good effort. Unfortunately I won’t personally be switching to LifeIO in the near future. They have a long way to go before they can compete with the usability and features of stand-alone products. Granted, LifeIO is still in Alpha mode, it would be unfair to judge the service in this early stage. I like the fundamental idea with LifeIO, I just have think they have a long way to go.

Creating a really good single-function web-based tool like a webmail is a challenge. Google has been working on Gmail for many, many years, and in my personal opinion, it has just recently become a mature product ready for primetime. With that in mind, creating an all-in-one solution is something few startups will have the funds or resources to deliver. My guess is that one of these aggregators will be acquired by some of the big consumer internet companies (Google, Yahoo or Microsoft). Only with the resources that such deal would bring the aggregators will be truly ready for primetime. Yet, kudos to LifeIO. They have a long way to go, but I wish them the best of luck!

LifeIO’s beta program is open today, and you can sign up here.