Streams are small bits of information that flow linearly. Twitter is an obvious example, but also Facebook, RSS feeds, Bloomberg and lots more. People are now less concerned about the totality of an information resource and more concerned about what has changed and what is new than they were before.

So, the Internet is shifting from pages to streams. From static to fluid information. From isolated to connected information. From consuming to engaging information. From seeking to discovering information. The fundamental character of the Internet is becoming transformed. Nova Spivack in an interesting lecture at Stanford (transcript as .doc, more elaborate blog post on the same topic) puts it this way:

This is a shift; we’re moving from a static web to a real time web. I’ve been calling this the “stream,” so we had the web and now we have the stream. It’s just a metaphor, but I think it’s going to be a big metaphor, just like the web is a metaphor, for this coming next ten years of the web.

This new metaphor is going to be big, indeed! Think about how you use google, up until now. Google is amazing at helping you achieve what you intend to do. Somehow, you want to know something or purchase something. You fire up google and type something in, and with luck and a little ingenuity, you find a perfect match for the thing you were seeking.

But streams can influence the prior step–determining what you intend to do. Think about how you use Facebook or other social network like twitter. You are “bored” (e.g., looking for something new) so you want to check out what your friends are doing. There, you find ideas about movies, books, tv shows and other things that interest people you care about. You can be linked directly from the idea to the thing itself, whether it is a book purchase or an online video. You go directly from new intention to action, bypassing the need for google entirely.

As a successful web site operator, you probably rely on search engines and email lists to drive traffic. But do you have a streaming strategy?

At a minimum, streaming represents a terrific new marketing opportunity. But I’d go further. Will you be a pioneer like Amazon of the ’90s or be like a dinosaur like Best Buy? Think about streaming as Disintermediation 2.0.

It is our strong conviction that our service helps Facebook’s mission (to increase sharing on its platform), and this award validates our belief. (Of course, we also strongly believe that we help web surfers and sites, too.)