Streamy: Your hub for social networking, news sharing

Editor’s note: This is part of VentureBeat’s series “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, you’ll still find lots of startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with Streamy, below.

At its core, Streamy is an aggregator. It brings together the news sites and blogs you’ve subscribed to — much like Google Reader — as well as your feeds from various social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, and even your chat clients like Google Talk and AIM. But saying it’s a one stop shop for news and social media junkies doesn’t do it justice — the excellence of Streamy is in the details.

When you sign up for Streamy, either via the site or through Facebook Connect, it provides you with a basic start page. You can then build it out by adding your Twitter account, Facebook newsfeed, FriendFeed stream, Google Talk account (to actually receive messages in the Streamy interface), and Digg feed. It even lets you track Flickr updates and receive messages from AIM, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live.

Streamy’s design gives you a lot of options within each of these channels. For instance, when you add Twitter, you gain the ability to tweet, view mentions, read direct messages and conduct real-time search all within the Streamy interface. When you add FriendFeed, you can post items, add comments and like others’ posts. The Digg interface lets you sort out top and topic-specific links. And the Facebook add-on lets you change your status, comment, likes, and view your friends’ walls. The icons for each of these channels appear at the top of every window, making them easy to navigate between with one click.

That said, you can’t do everything you can on these sites within Streamy. For example, while you can view how many friend or event requests or messages you have on Facebook, clicking on any of them takes you to the actual site. And in order to post in a particular room on FriendFeed, you need to go to that URL (though this functionality really should be added to Streamy). Still, in the social-networking arena, the site excels at giving you an up-to-date snapshot of your online presence and properties, either all together in dashboard form, or separately

Streamy’s real sweet spot is news aggregation and sharing. Not only does it let you import your subscriptions from Google Reader, Bloglines or an OPML URL or File, it also provides story recommendations based on your preferences, and a list of the web’s top newsfeeds, making it easy to subscribe to the most popular properties on the web in any category from arts to science to videogames. You can also add new subscriptions just like you would on Google Reader by providing the URL of the blog of news site. When you import from an outside RSS reader, Streamy maintains your folders and labels, making it easy to find your favorites just where you left them.

This same service also takes sharing news and links to a higher level. Let’s say you want to share a link from a blog you read all the time. You have several options at your fingertips. When you hold down your mouse on the title of the post in question, three options pop up in spheres around your cursor: Save the post, share the post with friends on Streamy (when you roll over this sphere, tiny boxes with your friends’ faces appear so you can choose which one), or through your social networks (when you roll over this sphere, tiny boxes appear giving you the option to share via Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed or Digg. If you release the mouse, a new window pops up where you can check boxes next to the various services you want to share through (allowing you to share the link on all of them at once), or by typing in the email addresses of people you want to send the link to. You always have the ability to add comments to the posts you share. And with your chat client running in the right-hand sidebar, you can even drag a link straight from the reader interface to someone’s screenname to send it to them.

As convenient as that all sounds, there are a couple or caveats. First, Streamy would be way more awesome if more people used it. Right now, the company says it has “tens of thousands of users” — but that isn’t many. As is, it’s unlikely that any of your friends belong to the site, hobbling cool features that are only possible when you’re sharing or conversing with other Streamy members. And second — despite its emphasis on sharing options and subscription management — it doesn’t actually let you share posts via Google Reader, a major sticking point. Hopefully these two problems will be remedied over time or in future iterations. The company has been fairly quick to respond to user feedback. Since it launched its public beta in March, it has successfully implemented Facebook Connect and chat.

Beyond that, the interface is sleek and appealing — and of course, customizable with different skins. And I dare say its RSS interface is more intuitive and easier to navigate than Google Reader. With a collapsible three-column appearance that resembles Tweetdeck, it’s not too busy or complex for continuous use throughout the day.

Based in Manhattan Beach, Calif., Streamy was originally founded in 2007 by Dan Mosites and Jonathan Gray. If it has raised any capital, it has yet to disclose it. According to data from Compete, its number of unique monthly visitors dropped from 45,000 to less than 10,000 between May and July of this year. It’s unclear what’s responsible for the drop off. The site has received glowing reviews so far. And as far as I’m concerned, if Streamy could import my email, I might never leave.

Come see the most promising new technologies unveiled for the first very time at DEMOfall 09 this September 21-23 in San Diego. VentureBeat readers may register to attend the conference at a special 20% discount off our regular rate. Register now at: http://www.demo.com/f9vb2

Next Story: Collecta releases API to spur development of real-time search apps
Previous Story: SharesPost hires big guns to invest in founder shares

People: Jerry Buhlmann