Social Networking in the last year has taken a new shape. As many folks continue to sign up with social networks, some are moving beyond the network model into more of a social streaming or life-streaming model. This new model seems to offer the best of several worlds, literally. New, socially-aware content aggregators are helping socially adept, bloggers and community participants share at a meta level. Newly adopted services such as FriendFeed, allow their users to share a wide-range of social activities.

For example, a video posted on YouTube, a blog entry on your personal or business blog and a post in Facebook will all show up in your FriendFeed. Currently, 43 services are monitored by FriendFeed for their users. So if you’re listening to music on Pandora or last.fm and posting photos on Flickr, FriendFeed is monitoring your activity. The information is then neatly delivered via RSS. Embed code is also available for your website or just add their Facebook application to your Facebook site.

Combine additional activity from your friends and family and things start picking up quickly. As interest grows, social participation becomes more or less apparent in your sphere of influence.

If you’re very socially active in one or more of the services monitored by FriendFeed, your popularity may increase. Ahh, in walks another marketing technique and the reason for this post, “brand streaming“. Although the business case for using FriendFeed and “brand streaming” is still developing, life streaming aka life-casting is already proving to be a valuable tool in developing brand recognition.

More to come as we monitor the effectiveness of life streaming at increasing brand awareness.